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upstart writes:

As Facebook plans the metaverse, it struggles to combat harassment in VR:

Sydney Smith had dealt with lewd, sexist remarks for more than a month while playing the Echo VR video game. But the 20-year-old reached her breaking point this summer.

[...] Smith tried to figure out which player had harassed her, so she could file a report. But that was tough because multiple people were talking at the same time. Since she hadn't been recording the match, Smith couldn't rewatch the encounter and look for a username.

[...] Smith isn't the only virtual reality player who's had trouble reporting an ugly run-in. Though Oculus and Echo VR, both owned by Facebook, have ways to report users who violate their rules, people who've experienced or witnessed harassment and offensive behavior in virtual environments say a cumbersome process deters them from filing a report. Content moderators have to examine a person's behavior, as well as words. (Oculus' VR policy says users aren't allowed to follow other users against their wishes, make sexual gestures or block someone's normal movement.)

As Facebook focuses on creating the metaverse -- a 3D digital world where people can play, work, learn and socialize -- content moderation will only get more complex. The company, which recently rebranded as Meta to highlight its ambitions, already struggles to combat hate speech and harassment on its popular social media platforms, where people leave behind a record of their remarks. The immersive spaces such as Horizon Worlds envisioned by CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be more challenging to police.

upstart writes:

Two-year follow up shows delaying umbilical cord clamping saves babies' lives: A minute's delay could make a lifetime of difference:

The new study compared outcomes for over 1500 babies from the initial study, 767 with caregivers aiming for 60 second delay in clamping and 764 with caregivers aiming for cord clamping before 10 seconds after delivery.

Researchers found that delaying clamping reduces a child's relative risk of death or major disability in early childhood by 17 percent. This included a 30 percent reduction in mortality before the age of two.

In addition, 15 percent fewer infants in the delayed-clamping group needed blood transfusions after birth.

The study is published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health today.

It is coordinated by the University of Sydney's NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre in collaboration with the IMPACT Clinical Trials Network of the Perinatal Society of Australia and New Zealand and the Australian and New Zealand Neonatal Network.

Study lead, Professor William Tarnow-Mordi, Head of Neonatal and Perinatal Trials at the Clinical Trials Centre and Professor of Neonatal Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine and Health said the simple process of aiming to wait a minute before clamping will have significant impact worldwide.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The move is the latest effort by the country to rein in the power of technology companies.

Australia will create a licensing framework for cryptocurrency exchanges and consider launching a retail central bank digital currency as part of the biggest overhaul of its payments industry in a quarter of a century.

The country will also broaden its payment laws to cover online transaction providers like Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google as well as buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) providers like Afterpay Ltd, ending their run of operating without direct supervision.

“If we do not reform the current framework, it will be Silicon Valley that determines the future of our payment system,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in prepared speech notes supplied to Reuters. “Australia must retain its sovereignty over our payment system.”

Australia’s conservative coalition government has been at the forefront of global efforts to rein in large technology companies as it prepares for a federal election by next May.

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upstart writes:

Julian Assange Loses Appeal: British High Court Accepts U.S. Request to Extradite Him for Trial:

In a London courtroom on Friday morning, Julian Assange suffered a devastating blow to his quest for freedom. A two-judge appellate panel of the United Kingdom's High Court ruled that the U.S.'s request to extradite Assange to the U.S. to stand trial on espionage charges is legally valid.

As a result, that extradition request will now be sent to British Home Secretary Prita Patel, who technically must approve all extradition requests but, given the U.K. Government's long-time subservience to the U.S. security state, is all but certain to rubber-stamp it. Assange's representatives, including his fiancee Stella Morris, have vowed to appeal the ruling, but today's victory for the U.S. means that Assange's freedom, if it ever comes, is further away than ever: not months but years even under the best of circumstances.

In endorsing the U.S. extradition request, the High Court overturned a lower court's ruling from January which had concluded that the conditions of U.S. prison — particularly for those accused of national security crimes — are so harsh and oppressive that there is a high likelihood that Assange would commit suicide. In January's ruling, Judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected all of Assange's arguments that the U.S. was seeking to punish him not for crimes but for political offenses. But in rejecting the extradition request, she cited the numerous attestations from Assange's doctors that his physical and mental health had deteriorated greatly after seven years of confinement in the small Ecuadorian Embassy where he had obtained asylum, followed by his indefinite incarceration in the U.K.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

George Pérez announced his cancer diagnosis on his Facebook page, and fans quickly posted messages of support.

Even Marvel and DC fans who don't normally pay attention to the names of individual comics artists may know George Pérez. The retired artist penciled Marvel's The Avengers in the 1970s and again in the 1990s, drew DC's The New Teen Titans in the 1980s, penciled DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 1980s, and relaunched Wonder Woman in the 1980s as both writer and artist. He also worked on other popular comics, including Superman and Silver Surfer.

On Tuesday, Pérez posted a message on his official Facebook page announcing the sad news that he has stage 3 pancreatic cancer. 

"It is surgically inoperable and my estimated life expectancy is between 6 months to a year," he wrote.

Any fans wish to comment?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Super trees' may help save Houston ... and beyond: Live oaks, sycamores top ranking of trees that mitigate effects of pollution, climate change:

A new study by collaborators at Rice University, the Houston Health Department's environmental division and Houston Wilderness establishes live oaks and American sycamores as champions among 17 "super trees" that will help make the city more livable and lays out a strategy to improve climate and health in vulnerable urban areas.

Best of all for Houston, they're already implementing their plan in the city, and now offer what they've learned to others.

The open access study in the journal Plants People Planet -- led by Houston Wilderness President Deborah January-Bevers and colleagues at Rice and in city government -- lays out a three-part framework for deciding what trees are the right ones to plant, how to identify places where planting will have the highest impact and how to engage with community leadership to make the planting project a reality.

Using Houston as a best-case example, the collaborators determined what trees would work best in the city based on their ability to soak up carbon dioxide and other pollutants, drink in water, stabilize the landscape during floods and provide a canopy to mitigate heat.

upstart writes:

Italian regulator fines Amazon $1.28 billion for abusing its market dominance:

Italy's antitrust authority (AGCM) has fined Amazon €1.13 billion ($1.28 billion) for "abuse of dominant position," the second penalty it has imposed on Amazon over the last month. Amazon holds a position of "absolute dominance" in the Italian brokerage services market, "which has allowed it to promote its own logistics service, called Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA)," the authority wrote in a (Google translated) press release.

According to the AGCM, companies must use Amazon's FBA service if they want access to key benefits like the Prime label, which in turn allows them to participate in Black Friday sales and other key events. "Amazon has thus prevented third-party sellers from associating the Prime label with offers not managed with FBA," it said.

The authority said access to those functions are "crucial" for seller success. It also noted that third-party sellers using FBA are not subject to the same stringent performance requirements as non-FBA sellers. As such, they're less likely to be suspended from the platform if they fail to meet certain goals. Finally, it noted that sellers using Amazon's logistics services are discouraged from offering their products on other online platforms, at least to the same extent they do on Amazon.

DannyB writes:

Japanese Billionaire Arrives at Space Station for 12-Day Tourist Trip:

Yusaku Maezawa, a Japanese billionaire and fashion retail mogul, arrived at the International Space Station for a 12-day stay on Wednesday. [Dec 8] He is the latest privately funded traveler to the orbital laboratory in a year that has seen more tourists making voyages to space than ever before.

Mr. Maezawa, the founder of Zozo, a Japanese online fashion retailer, launched to space from Baikonur, Kazakhstan at 2:38 a.m. Eastern time (10:38 a.m. local time) on a Russian Soyuz rocket with Yozo Hirano, a production assistant who will document his trip. Alexander Misurkin, a Russian astronaut, was also on board. The three-man crew docked to the space station six hours later at 8:40 a.m. and boarded the outpost around 11:12 a.m.

[...] Mr. Maezawa, an animated adventure-seeker, drew international attention in 2016 when he spent $57.3 million at an auction for a painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat. In 2017, he paid $110.5 million for another painting by the same artist. In 2018, he declared his interest in spaceflight at an event at the Southern California headquarters of SpaceX, where he joined the company's founder, Elon Musk, onstage to announce that he would be the first passenger to ride SpaceX's Starship, a massive next-generation rocket that will one day ferry NASA astronauts to the lunar surface.

[...] The space station jaunt for Mr. Maezawa, 46, was announced in May, and he has been training for weeks at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonauts Training Center just outside Moscow.

Read more of the article for estimates of how much Yusaku may have paid for his ride to space.

Previously:

takyon writes:

Space sleeping bag to solve astronauts' squashed eyeball disorder

Scientists have developed a hi-tech sleeping bag that could prevent the vision problems that some astronauts experience while living in space.

In zero-gravity, fluids float into the head and squash the eyeball over time. It's regarded as one of the riskiest medical problems affecting astronauts, with some experts concerned it could compromise missions to Mars. The sleeping bag sucks fluid out of the head and towards the feet, countering the pressure build-up.

[...] The sleeping bag, developed with outdoor equipment manufacturer REI, fits around the person's waist, enclosing their lower body within a solid frame.

A suction device, that works on the same principle as a vacuum cleaner, creates a pressure difference that draws fluid down towards the feet. This prevents it from building up in the brain and applying damaging pressure to the eyeball.

Several questions need to be answered before the sleeping bag technology is used routinely, including the optimal amount of time astronauts should spend in the sleeping bag each day.

Journal Reference:
Christopher M. Hearon, Katrin A. Dias, Gautam Babu, et al. Nightly Lower Body Negative Pressure and Choroid Engorgement in Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome, JAMA Ophthalmology (DOI: 10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2021.5200)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Where did western honey bees come from? New research finds the sweet spot:

The western honey bee is used for crop pollination and honey production throughout most of the world, and has a remarkable capacity for surviving in vastly different environments -- from tropical rainforest, to arid environments, to temperate regions with cold winters. It is native to Africa, Europe and Asia, and was recently believed to have originated in Africa.

The research team sequenced 251 genomes from 18 subspecies from the honey bee's native range and used this data to reconstruct the origin and pattern of dispersal of honey bees. The team found that an Asian origin -- likely Western Asia -- was strongly supported by the genetic data.

"As one of the world's most important pollinators, it's essential to know the origin of the western honey bee to understand its evolution, genetics and how it adapted as it spread," says corresponding author Professor Amro Zayed of York University's Faculty of Science.

The study also highlights that the bee genome has several "hot spots" that allowed honey bees to adapt to new geographic areas. While the bee genome has more than 12,000 genes, only 145 of them had repeated signatures of adaptation associated with the formation of all major honey bee lineages found today.

Journal Reference:
Kathleen A. Dogantzis, Tanushree Tiwari, Ida M. Conflitti, et al. Thrice out of Asia and the adaptive radiation of the western honey bee, Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abj2151)

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward offers the following story:

Here's yet another reason that (assuming the article is correct) current self-driving technology has a long ways to go before it is ready for large-scale roll out in urban areas.

https://www.autonomousvehicleinternational.com/news/ai-sensor-fusion/ai-research-combats-problem-of-vanishing-cyclists-and-pedestrians.html

One particularly vexing problem for autonomous driving systems is how to deal with situations where sensors lose sight of other road users. For example, a cyclist dropping out of view behind a car or other obstruction.

Now, researchers at Örebro University in Sweden say they have developed an AI application that can account for such occurrences. "We have succeeded in developing a new way for self-driving vehicles to understand and explain the dynamics of our world just like people do," said Mehul Bhatt, professor of computer science at the university.

[...] The researchers noted that in traffic, humans are used to constantly anticipating what will happen next. This reasoning ability is something that current self-driving vehicles and AI systems in general are lacking. In the study, Bhatt, together with colleagues in Germany and India, stated that combining modern neural learning with common-sense reasoning can overcome some of these pitfalls. "The developed AI method results in self-driving vehicles learning to understand the world much like humans. With understanding also comes the ability to explain decisions," added Bhatt.

Mykl writes:

The iPhones of 9 US State Department officials were infected by malware developed and sold by the Israeli exploit firm NSO Group.

The US officials, either stationed in Uganda or focusing on issues related to that country, received warnings ... from Apple informing them their iPhones were being targeted by hackers. Citing unnamed people with knowledge of the attacks, Reuters said the hackers used software from NSO

An NSO spokesperson said in a statement that after learning of the allegations by Reuters, it immediately terminated the responsible customer's access to its system while it looks into the matter

NSO Group says that they only sell to Governments, but what if your government is really into hacking the phones of their opponents (as opposed to the official "national security" reason given for this software)?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

ESA and Airbus have signed a contract to move forward with the design and construction of the Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey, Ariel, planned for launch in 2029.

Ariel is the third in a trio of dedicated exoplanet missions conceived by ESA focusing on various aspects of this rapidly evolving subject area. It will follow Cheops, which launched in 2019, and Plato, scheduled for launch in 2026.

Ariel will study the composition of exoplanets, how they formed and how they evolve, by surveying a diverse sample of about 1000 extrasolar planets, simultaneously in visible and infrared wavelengths.

It is the first mission dedicated to measuring the chemical composition and thermal structures of exoplanets, linking them to the host star's environment. This will fill a significant gap in our knowledge of how the planet's chemistry is linked to the environment where it formed, or if and how the type of host star drives the physics and chemistry of the planet's evolution.

Observations of these worlds will give insights into the early stages of planetary and atmospheric formation, and their subsequent evolution, in turn contributing to the understanding of our own solar system. They could help us find out whether there is life elsewhere in our Universe and if there is another planet like Earth.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

TSMC Founder: Pat Gelsinger Too Old to Make Intel Great Again - TSMC and Intel exchange rants.

After less than a year into his tenure as Intel's chief executive, Pat Gelsinger has set up the company's process technology roadmap that spans through 2025 and introduced the company's IDM 2.0 foundry strategy. But the ambitious CEO may not have enough time to bring Intel back to its glory days, said Morris Chang, the founder and a former CEO of TSMC, reports UDN.

Pat Gelsinger is 60, and there is a rule that Intel's executives must retire at the age of 65. As a result, Gelsinger may not have enough time to put Intel back in a manufacturing technology leadership position, Chang noted while delivering his lecture 'Cherish Taiwan's Advantages in Semiconductor Wafer Manufacturing.'

[...] TSMC is not particularly happy with Gelsinger. Last week, he said that the reliance on Taiwan as the global hub for semiconductor manufacturing was a significant risk since China had never given up plans to capture the country.

"Taiwan is not a stable place," said Gelsinger at Fortune Brainstorm Tech, reports Nikkei. "Beijing sent 27 warplanes to Taiwan's air defense identification zone this week. Does that make you feel more comfortable or less?"

He also re-emphasized his view that foreign semiconductor companies should not receive subsidies from the U.S. government to build new fabs under the $52-billion CHIPS act. Gelsinger called on the U.S. government to provide incentives only for American chipmakers. He argued that semiconductor companies from China, Taiwan and South Korea received major aid from their respective governments, which made it harder for American companies like Intel to compete.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel plans to take self-driving car unit public in the U.S. in mid-2022

Intel has announced that it plans to list Mobileye, the Israeli autonomous driving firm it acquired for $15.3 billion in 2017, as part of an effort to branch out into new markets.

The Santa Clara chip manufacturer said Monday that it plans to take Mobileye public in the U.S. in mid-2022 via an initial public offering of newly issued Mobileye stock. The IPO could value Mobileye at more than $50 billion, according to some reports.

Intel, whose share price has fallen from $68 in April to less than $50 in December, said the listing will create value for Intel shareholders. It added that it will remain the majority shareholder of Mobileye.

Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger hailed the acquisition of Mobileye as a success, adding that Mobileye's revenue will be 40% higher in 2021 than it was in 2020.

Intel CEO aims to build chip plants with money raised from Mobileye IPO

Gelsinger said Intel will retain a majority stake in Mobileye and will also receive "the majority of the proceeds" from the IPO. He declined to specify the size of the stake that would be sold or a fundraising target, but said that "certainly it will be helpful in our overall aggressive buildout of plants."

Intel has said it plans to build two chip plants in Arizona, and add other plants in the United States and Europe at sites that have not been announced.

Previously: Intel Buys Driverless Car Sensor Company Mobileye for $15.3 Billion

Original Submission