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It has been quite a year so far. A new Covid-19 variant was just discovered. The economy is lurching along trying to make the best of things with supply shortages and delivery challenges. There seems to be a new challenge to face wherever we look.

Then again, there are those on the margins who were already struggling to make ends meet. The first to be let go when times are tough and the last to be rehired — through no fault of their own. Having a college education is no guarantee of success. (I have experienced homelessness, personally.) Health issues, automation replacing manual labor, an economic downturn when a major employer closes, a car accident and medical expenses... most of us are living closer to the edge than we realize.

Today is the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving and for the past nine years has been known as GivingTuesday. For me, it serves an an acknowledgement of my own mortality. That I will not live forever and I am just one unforeseen event away from being dependent on others to survive. I just heard on the news yesterday that a lung transplant (e.g. for someone who came down with COVID-19) costs $1.2 million. There goes your life's savings.

If at such times I would need to rely on others to get by, why not reach out right now and try to help someone else in a spirit of gratitude for what I have today and to help someone else who is struggling and is in need.

Monetary donations are one way to help. So is spending an evening at a soup kitchen. Volunteering to share your skills and knowledge to someone else. Even something as simple as resolving to smile and wave to all you meet on a walk. Such simple acts have no cost, but to someone who is having a rough day they can be priceless.

SoylentNews was founded by people who donated their time and talents to help a community. And continue to do so. So, look a little farther afield and help someone else today. You, and they, will be glad you did!

upstart writes:

NVIDIA Research's GauGAN AI Art Demo Responds to Words:

A picture worth a thousand words now takes just three or four words to create, thanks to GauGAN2, the latest version of NVIDIA Research's wildly popular AI painting demo.

The deep learning model behind GauGAN allows anyone to channel their imagination into photorealistic masterpieces — and it's easier than ever. Simply type a phrase like "sunset at a beach" and AI generates the scene in real time. Add an additional adjective like "sunset at a rocky beach," or swap "sunset" to "afternoon" or "rainy day" and the model, based on generative adversarial networks, instantly modifies the picture.

With the press of a button, users can generate a segmentation map, a high-level outline that shows the location of objects in the scene. From there, they can switch to drawing, tweaking the scene with rough sketches using labels like sky, tree, rock and river, allowing the smart paintbrush to incorporate these doodles into stunning images.

The new GauGAN2 text-to-image feature can now be experienced on NVIDIA AI Demos, where visitors to the site can experience AI through the latest demos from NVIDIA Research. With the versatility of text prompts and sketches, GauGAN2 lets users create and customize scenes more quickly and with finer control.

Direct link to YouTube video.

Kinda makes Turtle graphics from the 70s look rather basic. However, beware Rule 34…

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Our televisions and computer screens display news, movies, and shows in high-definition, allowing viewers a clear and vibrant experience. Fiber optic connections send laser light densely packed with data through cables to bring these experiences to users.

NASA and commercial aerospace companies are applying similar technologies to space communications, bringing optical speeds to the final frontier. Free-space optical communications leverages recent advancements in telecommunications to allow spacecraft to send high-resolution images and videos over laser links.

"Free-space" refers to the absence of the insulated, fiber optic cables that enable the terrestrial internet. Free-space laser communications flow freely through the vacuum of space, however atmosphere poses unique challenges to communications engineers.

NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will send data to and from ground stations and, eventually, in-space user missions over laser links.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

MI6 chief Richard Moore says Beijing and Moscow ‘pouring money’ into technological advances that will reshape espionage and geopolitics.

The chief of the United Kingdom’s foreign spy service is to warn that China and Russia are racing to master artificial intelligence in a way that could revolutionise geopolitics over the next 10 years.

Richard Moore, who heads the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, is due to make his first public speech since becoming chief of the organisation on Tuesday. In extracts of the speech released in advance by the British government he will say quantum engineering, engineered biology, vast troves of data and advances in computer power pose a threat that needs to be addressed by democratic powers.

“Our adversaries are pouring money and ambition into mastering artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology, because they know that mastering these technologies will give them leverage,” Moore, who rarely makes public speeches, will say when he sets out his view of current threats.

The world’s spies are trying to grapple with seismic advances in technology that are challenging traditional human-led spying operations, which have dominated espionage for thousands of years.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes from multiple sources:

https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/launch.html

Webb's launch date is set for December 22, 2021 07:20 EST.

Launch Vehicle

The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket. The launch vehicle is part of the European contribution to the mission. The Ariane 5 is one of the world's most reliable launch vehicles capable of delivering Webb to its destination in space. The European Space Agency (ESA) has agreed to provide an Ariane 5 launcher and associated launch services to NASA for Webb.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-59419110

The telescope will be able to see just about anything in the sky. However, it has one overriding objective - to see the light coming from the very first stars to shine in the Universe.

These pioneer stars are thought to have switched on about 100-200 million years after the Big Bang, or a little over 13.5 billion years ago.

Webb will be picking out groupings of these stars. They are so far away, their light - even though it moves at 300,000km (186,000 miles) per second - will have taken billions of years to travel the cosmos.

It should be possible for Webb to see (or least detect a faint glow from) the moment when the darkness ended and those first stars flickered into life.

https://earthsky.org/space/james-webb-telescope-hubble-successor-to-launch/

Countdown resumes for December 22 launch

[...] NASA said today that engineering teams have completed additional testing confirming the James Webb Space Telescope is ready for flight. And that means launch preparations are resuming. The Webb's target launch date is now, officially, December 22 at 7:20 a.m. EST (00:20 UTC). NASA said in a statement:

Additional testing was conducted this week to ensure the observatory's health following an incident that occurred when the release of a clamp band caused a vibration throughout the observatory.

On Wednesday, November 24, engineering teams completed these tests, and a NASA-led anomaly review board concluded no observatory components were damaged in the incident. A "consent to fuel" review was held. And NASA gave approval to begin fueling the observatory. Fueling operations will begin Thursday, November 25, and will take about 10 days.

See also: https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/james-webb-space-telescope-cleared-for-late-december-launch/ suggested by Mockingbird

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Big Tech firms should pay ISPs to upgrade networks, telcos in Europe claim:

The CEOs of 13 large European telecom companies today called on tech giants—presumably including Netflix and other big US companies—to pay for a portion of the Internet service providers' network upgrade costs. In a "joint CEO statement," the European telcos described their proposal as a "renewed effort to rebalance the relationship between global technology giants and the European digital ecosystem."

The letter makes an argument similar to one that AT&T and other US-based ISPs have made at times over the past 15 years, that tech companies delivering content over the Internet get a "free" ride and should subsidize the cost of building last-mile networks that connect homes to broadband access. These arguments generally don't mention the fact that tech giants already pay for their own Internet bandwidth costs and that Netflix and others have built their own content-delivery networks to help deliver the traffic that home-Internet customers choose to receive.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Innosilicon graphics cards based on "Fantasy One" GPU feature up to 32GB GDDR6X memory

Today at the "Fantasy One GPU Product Press Conference", Innosilicon, a Chinese company offering graphics and memory solutions unveiled its first discrete GPU.

At the event, Innosilicon revealed its plans for the Fantasy One GPU. This processor is based on Imagination graphics IP (BXT to be specific) which brings tons of innovations to the discrete GPU solutions offered by the Chinese company.

As many as four products have been revealed, including dual-GPU and single-GPU solutions. Type A is a consumer/workstation graphics card featuring a single Fantasy One GPU, which is actually a multi-chip (chiplet) design. Unfortunately, none of the news reports from China on this announcement had the exact configuration of the Fantasy One.

According to the data provided by Innoslicon, this GPU offers up to 5 TFLOPS of single-precision compute power [and a fillrate of 160 GPixel/s]. It is equipped with DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1, and VGA connectors. This card is to be equipped with up to 16 GB of GDDR6(X) memory across a 128-bit interface. So far, the G6X technology has been exclusive to NVIDIA/Micron Ampere GPUs, but apparently, Innosilicon made a lot of research in PAM4 signaling and was able to unlock up to 19 Gbps memory bandwidth for their GDDR6X implementation. A relatively short memory bus will have its toll on the maximum theoretical bandwidth though, which is to go up to 304 GB/s (so somewhere in between Radeon RX 6700XT and 6600XT).

[...] The Type B [...] is a dual-GPU solution featuring two Fantasy One GPUs connected by an interface known as Innolink. The company claims up to 10 TFLOPS of computing power and 320 GPixel/s fillrates. This card can offer 32 simultaneous 1080p/60FPS streams or 64 streams at 720/30FPS. It is to feature up to 32GB of GDDR6(X) memory but is again limited by dual 128-bit interfaces from each GPU. All these cards feature a PCI-Express 4.0 interface at full X16 width.

When people are willing to pay 2-4x as much for GPUs, competition is inevitable. Intel will be joining the market with "Alchemist" discrete GPUs in Q1/Q2 2022.

Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A doctoral student has developed an on-silicon laser, including testing and evaluating prototypes. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lpor.202100348

This has major potential in telecom at least; with only minor added steps, these opto-electrics were produced using current silicon lithographic processes.

Here, we demonstrate optical gain and lasing in a hybrid-integrated rare-earth silicon microdisk. The laser structure is straightforward, robust, low-cost, and can be implemented using existing wafer-scale silicon photonics fabrication processes and a single room-temperature post-processing step. In contrast to previous rare-earth lasers, the laser cavity and output are directly in the silicon layer, and the ultra-compact device size of 40-µm-diameter is on a scale compatible with standard passive and active silicon photonic devices. We show single-mode lasing around 1.9 µm using a monolithic thulium-doped tellurite gain medium and efficient pumping at wavelengths around 1.6 µm, where silicon is highly transparent and commercial pump light sources are readily available. Besides demonstrating an effective and low-cost approach to rare-earth gain for silicon photonic microsystems, such lasers provide an incentive for expanding applications in an emerging 2-µm wavelength band, which is of interest for communications, nonlinear and quantum optics, and sensing and is motivated by silicon's lower two-photon absorption and the recent development of efficient monolithic passive and active silicon devices in this range. Optical gain and lasing in a hybrid rare-earth silicon structure opens the door to on-chip amplifiers for low-loss circuits and versatile integrated laser designs, using the wideband rare-earth gain available in different near- and mid-infrared wavelength regions of interest and the high-performance passive and active functionality in the silicon layer, on silicon photonics platforms.

Journal Reference:
Khadijeh Miarabbas Kiani, Henry C. Frankis, Cameron M. Naraine, et al. Lasing in a Hybrid Rare‐Earth Silicon Microdisk [open], Laser & Photonics Reviews (DOI: 10.1002/lpor.202100348)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nissan unveils US$18 billion 'Ambition 2030' electric car agenda with a Tesla Cybertruck competitor

Nissan just started taking reservations for its Ariya electric SUV priced at US$46,000, but the Japanese carmaker is not stopping here, it seems. Not to be outdone by its rivals, the maker of the Nissan Leaf, one of the first commercially available electric cars, just unveiled a comprehensive US$17.6 billion electrification plan. Dubbed "Ambition 2030," the program aims to release no less than 23 "electrified" vehicles by that year, including 15 new fully electric models across the Nissan and INFINITY brands. Besides the Nissan Ariya that is already a fact, the company has a few concepts lined up to hit the conveyor belts:

• Nissan SURF-OUT - a Tesla Cybertruck electric pick-up competitor;
• Nissan CHILL-OUT crossover EV;
• Nissan MAX-OUT sports convertible;
• Nissan HANG-OUT family EV that "changes the perception of mobile space."

Nissan's electric car strategy includes battery investments as well. The company aims to reduce the current lithium batteries' costs in the span of the "Ambition 2030" project, as well as have a solid state battery

Original Submission

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.

Original Submission

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.