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upstart writes:

Jack Dorsey resigns as CEO of Twitter:

Jack Dorsey announced today that he's stepping down as CEO of Twitter, the social network he helped found in 2006. The change is effective immediately.

Dorsey did not say what spurred the sudden move, though in his resignation letter, which he also shared on Twitter, he said, "There has been a lot of talk about the importance of a company being 'founder-led.' Ultimately, I believe that's severely limiting and a single point of failure. I've worked hard to ensure this company can break away from its founding and founders."

not sure anyone has heard but,

I resigned from Twitter pic.twitter.com/G5tUkSSxkl

— jack⚡️ (@jack) November 29, 2021

Parag Agrawal, the company's chief technical officer, has been named the new CEO. "The board ran a rigorous process considering all options and unanimously appointed Parag," Dorsey wrote. "He's been my choice for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs."

Also at BBC, c|net, The Washington Post among others.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

On November 27, after a year and eight months flying through the inner Solar System, Solar Orbiter [swung] by home to ‘drop off’ some extra energy. This will line the spacecraft up for its next six flybys of Venus. These final gravity assists will hone and tilt Solar Orbiter’s orbit, enabling the heat-protected probe to capture the first-ever direct images of our star’s poles, and much more.

During the upcoming flyby, Solar Orbiter is estimated to pass just 460 km from Earth’s surface at its closest approach – about 30 kilometers above the path of the International Space Station. It will travel twice through the Geostationary ring at 36 000 kilometers from Earth’s surface and even through low-Earth orbit, below 2000 kilometers – two regions littered with space junk. [(Graphic by ESA)]

Before we worry too much, let’s start by pointing out that the chance of Solar Orbiter being struck by debris is very, very, very small. Earth observation missions spend their entire life in low-Earth orbit – the most debris-filled region of space, and while they perform ‘collision avoidance maneuvers’ a few times per year, Solar Orbiter will spend only a few minutes here as it heads towards closest approach and then leaves again, onward to Venus.

canopic jug writes:

At Tux Machines, educator and author, Andy Farnell, explores the problem of why we can't teach cybersecurity, whether at universities or trade schools. We've gotten to the point where neither the politicians nor the vendors themselves know or care what they are talking about in regards to device ownership, trust models, updates, conflicting laws, and most of all security theatre.

Big-tech corporations are insinuating themselves into our public education and health systems without any proper discussion around their place. It is left to well educated individuals to opt-out, reject their systems, and insist on secure, interoperable choices. Advisories like the European Interoperability Framework (EIF is part of Communication COM134 of the European Commission March 2017) recognise that tech is set to become a socially divisive equality issue. The technical poverty of the future will not separate into "haves and have-nots", but "will and the will-nots", those who will trade their privacy and freedom for access and those who eschew convenience for digital dignity.

As the word "infrastructure" (really vertical superstructure) has slyly replaced ICT (a horizontal service) battles have raged between tech monopolies and champions of open standards for control of government, education and health. The idea of public code (see the commentary of David A Wheeler and Richard Stallman) as the foundation of an interoperable technological society, has been vigorously attacked by tech giants. Germany fought Microsoft tooth and nail to replace Windows systems with 20,000 Linux PCs in 2015, only to have Microsoft lobby their way back in, replacing 30,000 desktops with Windows 10 in 2017. Now the Germans seem poised to switch again, this time taking back all public services by mandating support for LibreOffice.

He closes by calling out the current computer technology sector as being about power and alliances. It is more a part of the problem than a part of the solution in regards to ransomware, malvertising, and political manipulation.

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owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2021/11/reverse-engineering-yamaha-dx7_28.html

The Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer was released in 1983 and became extremely popular, defining the sound of 1980s pop music. Because microprocessors weren't fast enough in the early 1980s, the DX7 used two custom digital chips: the EGS "envelope" chip generated frequency and envelope data, which it fed to the OPS "operator" chip that generated the sound waveforms. A key part of the OPS chip is an exponential circuit, which is used for frequency calculation and envelope application. In this blog post, I examine this circuit—implemented by a ROM, shifter, and other circuitry—in detail and extract the ROM's data.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Nextcloud and almost 30 other European companies have filed a complaint about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior with its OneDrive cloud storage offering.

[...] Now, with a coalition of other European Union (EU) software and cloud organizations and companies called the "Coalition for a Level Playing Field," Nextcloud has formally complained to the European Commission (EC) about Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior by aggressively bundling its OneDrive cloud, Teams, and other services with Windows 10 and 11.

Nextcloud claims that by pushing consumers to sign up and hand over their data to Microsoft, the Windows giant is limiting consumer choice and creating an unfair barrier for other companies offering competing services.

Specifically, Microsoft has grown its EU market share to 66%, while local providers' market share declined from 26% to 16%. Microsoft has done this not by any technical advantage or sales benefits, but by heavily favoring its own products and services, self-preferencing over other services. While self-preferencing is not illegal per se under EU competition laws, if a company abuses its dominant market position, it can break the law.

Nextcloud states that Microsoft has outright blocked other cloud service vendors by leveraging its position as gatekeeper to extend its reach in neighboring markets, pushing users deeper into its ecosystems. Thus, more specialized EU companies can't compete on merit, as the key to success is not a good product but the ability to distort competition and block market access.

upstart writes:

[NB: The following article makes reference to oft-cited Trolley problem. Highly recommended.--martyb/Bytram]

The self-driving trolley problem: How will future AI systems make the most ethical choices for all of us?:

Imagine a future with self-driving cars that are fully autonomous. If everything works as intended, the morning commute will be an opportunity to prepare for the day's meetings, catch up on news, or sit back and relax.

But what if things go wrong? The car approaches a traffic light, but suddenly the brakes fail and the computer has to make a split-second decision. It can swerve into a nearby pole and kill the passenger, or keep going and kill the pedestrian ahead.

The computer controlling the car will only have access to limited information collected through car sensors, and will have to make a decision based on this. As dramatic as this may seem, we're only a few years away from potentially facing such dilemmas.

Autonomous cars will generally provide safer driving, but accidents will be inevitable—especially in the foreseeable future, when these cars will be sharing the roads with human drivers and other road users.

upstart writes:

India tells Starlink to stop offering satellite internet without a license:

SpaceX doesn't always get a warm reception when it expands Starlink. Reuters reports the Indian government has told Starlink to immediately stop "booking/rendering" satellite internet service in the country until it has a license to operate.

[...] Starlink is currently available in 21 countries in mostly public beta tests. However, SpaceX has a particularly strong incentive to serve India as soon as possible. India has a very large rural population (over 898 million, according to World Bank data). It's a prime market for satellite broadband, and the Starlink team hopes 80 percent of devices sold in India by late 2022 will serve rural areas. However, it's now clear India's government doesn't share that same enthusiasm.

Original Submission

upstart, with similar submissions from Frigatebird and others, writes:

Physicists detect signs of neutrinos at Large Hadron Collider:

The international Forward Search Experiment team, led by physicists at the University of California, Irvine, has achieved the first-ever detection of neutrino candidates produced by the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN facility near Geneva, Switzerland.

In a paper published today in the journal Physical Review D, the researchers describe how they observed six neutrino interactions during a pilot run of a compact emulsion detector installed at the LHC in 2018.

"Prior to this project, no sign of neutrinos has ever been seen at a particle collider," said co-author Jonathan Feng, UCI Distinguished Professor of physics & astronomy and co-leader of the FASER Collaboration. "This significant breakthrough is a step toward developing a deeper understanding of these elusive particles and the role they play in the universe."

He said the discovery made during the pilot gave his team two crucial pieces of information.

"First, it verified that the position forward of the ATLAS interaction point at the LHC is the right location for detecting collider neutrinos," Feng said. "Second, our efforts demonstrated the effectiveness of using an emulsion detector to observe these kinds of neutrino interactions."

upstart writes:

Pandemic skyrockets in Europe; COVID is the No. 1 cause of death:

Health officials in Europe are pleading for people to adopt more health precautions as the region grapples with its most dramatic surge of COVID-19 cases yet in the pandemic.

Cases have been skyrocketing across the European region since the start of October, with cases rising from around 130,000 per day to the current all-time high of more than 330,000 per day. For the week ending November 21, the region of 53 countries—including the European Union, the United Kingdom, Russia, and several countries in Central Asia—reported 2,427,657 new cases, representing 67 percent of all COVID-19 cases reported globally.

The region also accounted for 57 percent of all COVID-19 deaths worldwide, with 29,465 deaths in the week ending on November 21, according to a weekly report by the World Health Organization. During the week, daily COVID-19 deaths increased to close to 4,200, doubling from 2,100 daily deaths seen at the end of September, the WHO noted.

The countries now seeing the highest numbers of new cases per day are Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and Turkey, according to data tracking by The New York Times. Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Romania, and Germany are reporting the highest daily numbers of deaths in the region.

At this point in the pandemic, the European region has recorded over 1.51 million deaths, and COVID-19 is the No. 1 cause of death. With the current surge, deaths are projected to reach more than 2.2 million by next spring, and officials expect "high and extreme stress" on health systems in dozens of countries.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Insulin in the Brain Influences Dopamine Levels:

Worldwide, more and more people are developing obesity and type 2 diabetes. Studies show that the brain plays an important role in causing these diseases. Dopamine is the most important neurotransmitter for the reward system. The hormone insulin is released after eating and regulates the metabolism in the human body (homeostatic system). It is not yet known how these two systems interact. However, changes in these systems have been linked to obesity and diabetes. In the current study, researchers from the Institute of Diabetes Research and Metabolic Diseases (IDM) of Helmholtz Zentrum München at the University of Tübingen, a partner of the DZD, and Tübingen University Hospital (Innere IV, Director: Prof. Andreas Birkenfeld) examined how the two systems interact specifically in the reward center of the brain, the striatum[*].

"Our eating behavior is regulated by the interaction between the reward system and homeostatic systems. Studies indicate that insulin also acts in dopamine-driven reward centers in the brain. It has also been shown that obesity leads to changes in the signaling of the brain that have a negative effect on the glucose metabolism in the whole body," said first author Stephanie Kullmann. "We now wanted to decipher the interaction between the two systems in humans and find out how insulin regulates the dopamine system."

looorg writes:

IKEA has furnished and is renting out a 10 m² apartment in central Tokyo for about a dollar per month. It's clearly a gimmick of sorts as the furniture in the apartment are worth a lot more then that. Still looking at the pictures it looks like living in a nicely furnished prison cell, that is also very high (floor to ceiling). Any takers for such compact living? I dont think climbing around on ladders to get around is for me.

It seems very futuristic though; it is a staple of sci-fi to pack people like sardines in a can (Ripley's apartment in aliens, 5th element etc., etc.)

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/25/business/ikea-japan-tokyo-tiny-apartment-scli-intl/index.html
https://www.ikea.com/jp/ja/campaigns/ca00-tiny-homes-pub616dcf20

Original Submission

takyon writes:

First RISC-V smartphones could launch in 2022

Sipeed recently tweeted a short video depicting its RISC-V RV64-powered smartphone prototype running Android 10. If all goes well, the Chinese company expects to release the first commercial models in 2022.

[...] The flexibility and ease of development brought on by the latest iterations of the RISC-V ISA have also been noticed by Intel and Apple recently, but this architecture seems more appealing to Chinese tech producers that intend to cut ties with the Western world and reduce reliance on US-owned patents as much as possible. To this effect, Alibaba already managed to port Android 10 on RISC-V about a year ago via the T-Head XuanTie board. More recently, Sipeed tweeted a video of what looks to be an Android 10 device with a 7-inch touchscreen powered by the XuanTie C901 board.

Original Submission

weilawei writes:

Phys.org reports,

A team of physicists at the Universities of Bristol, Vienna, the Balearic Islands and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI-Vienna) has shown how quantum systems can simultaneously evolve along two opposite time arrows—both forward and backward in time.

The study, published in the latest issue of Communications Physics, necessitates a rethink of how the flow of time is understood and represented in contexts where quantum laws play a crucial role.

Dr. Gonzalo Manzano, co-author from the University of the Balearic Islands, said: "In our work, we quantified the entropy produced by a system evolving in quantum superposition of processes with opposite time arrows. We found this most often results in projecting the system onto a well-defined time's direction, corresponding to the most likely process of the two. And yet, when small amounts of entropy are involved (for instance, when there is so little toothpaste spilled that one could see it being reabsorbed into the tube), then one can physically observe the consequences of the system having evolved along the forward and backward temporal directions at the same time."

Quantum superposition of thermodynamic evolutions with opposing time's arrows, Communications Physics (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42005-021-00759-1

A preprint of their paper is available.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An Alzheimer's Nasal Spray Vaccine Is About to Enter Human Trials For The First Time

Alzheimer's treatments seemed like an unlikely prospect mere months ago.

Drug trials tried and failed for 20 years to produce treatments that would stop the progression of the disease, and several large pharmaceutical companies abandoned the mission of developing Alzheimer's treatments altogether.

[...] Now, the field of Alzheimer's treatments may finally be opening up.

Last week, Brigham and Women's Hospital announced it would spearhead the first human trial of a nasal vaccine for Alzheimer's, designed to prevent or slow the disease's progression.

The trial is small – 16 people between ages 60 to 85 with Alzheimer's symptoms will receive two doses of the vaccine one week apart. But it builds on decades of research suggesting that stimulating the immune system can help clear out beta-amyloid plaques in the brain.

[...] The vaccine sprays a drug called Protollin directly into the nasal passage, with the goal of activating immune cells to remove the plaque.

FDA OKs Phase 1 Trial of Nasal Spray Immunotherapy Protollin

Protollin is a new intranasal immunotherapy made of proteins derived from the outer membrane of certain bacteria. It works by stimulating the innate immune system — the part of the immune system that serves as the body's first line of defense — to clear amyloid-beta plaques and tau tangles from the brain.

It worked in mice, so it must be good.

Also at Medical News Today.

Related: Novel Dementia Vaccine on Track for Human Trials Within Two Years

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Giving social support to others may boost your health:

While researchers have long thought that receiving social support from others is a key to health, results from studies have shown mixed results. So researchers from The Ohio State University decided to see if giving support may also play an important role in health.

They found that on one important measure of health -- chronic inflammation -- indicators of positive social relationships were associated with lower inflammation only among people who said they were available to provide social support to family and friends.

In other words, having friends to lean on may not help your health unless you also say that you're available to help them when they need it.

“Positive relationships may be associated with lower inflammation only for those who believe they can give more support in those relationships,” said Tao Jiang, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Ohio State.

Preliminary evidence in the study suggested that the link between health and the willingness to help others may be especially important for women.

[...] The study used data from 1,054 participants in the National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.S. These were all healthy adults between 34 and 84 years old.

Journal Reference:
Tao Jiang, Syamil Yakin, Jennifer Crocker, Baldwin M. Way. Perceived social support-giving moderates the association between social relationships and interleukin-6 levels in blood. Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, 2022; 100: 25 (DOI: 10.1016/j.bbi.2021.11.002)

Original Submission