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upstart writes:

Tech bug keeps Mazda radios locked in to NPR:

Owners of 2014-17 Mazdas, in the Puget Sound area, contacted KUOW to report their infotainment systems were permanently locked in to the network.

Missing file extensions in album images sent with its digital-radio broadcast reportedly triggered the glitch.

The fix, according to Mazda, requires the replacement of a component.

[...] "We know lots of you always keep your car radio tuned to KUOW - but now some drivers don't have a choice," KUOW told listeners.

Scott Smith, in Seattle, told the network his on-screen menu would not stop cycling through options.

"I tried rebooting it because I've done that in the past - and nothing happened," he said.

"I realised I could hear NPR - but I can't change the station, can't use the navigation, can't use the Bluetooth."

KUOW said local Mazda dealerships had been "flooded with calls".

[...] "Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue."

The fix requires the replacement of the $1,500 connectivity master unit, reports say.

But Mazda said customers could apply for a free "goodwill" replacement.

Original Submission

coolgopher writes:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/09/nuclear-fusion-heat-record-a-huge-step-in-quest-for-new-energy-source

The prospect of harnessing the power of the stars has moved a step closer to reality after scientists set a new record for the amount of energy released in a sustained fusion reaction.

Researchers at the Joint European Torus (JET), a fusion experiment in Oxfordshire, generated 59 megajoules of heat – equivalent to about 14kg of TNT – during a five-second burst of fusion, more than doubling the previous record of 21.7 megajoules set in 1997 by the same facility.

The feat announced on Wednesday follows more than two decades of tests and refinements at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and has been hailed as a "major milestone" on the road to fusion becoming a viable and sustainable low-carbon energy source.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Factory contamination affects "at least" 7 billion gigabytes of flash memory:

Solid-state storage devices have so far been spared from the scarcity and high prices that the chip shortage has wrought upon graphics cards, cars, Raspberry Pi boards, and innumerable other products. But that may change soon, due in part to a "contamination" at two Japanese factories used by Western Digital and Kioxia to make flash memory.

According to a short Western Digital press release, the contamination issue has affected "at least" 6.5 exabytes of flash memory, which works out to a bit under 7 million terabytes or 7 billion gigabytes—that's a lot of NAND that will suddenly be unavailable for SSDs, phones, memory cards, and USB drives. An analyst speaking to Bloomberg suggested that the final total of the lost capacity could be as much as 16 exabytes.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Early Humans Placed the Hearth at the Optimal Location in Their Cave 170,000 Years Ago:

A groundbreaking study in prehistoric archaeology at Tel Aviv University provides evidence for high cognitive abilities in early humans who lived 170,000 years ago. In a first-of-its kind study, the researchers developed a software-based smoke dispersal simulation model and applied it to a known prehistoric site. They discovered that the early humans who occupied the cave had placed their hearth at the optimal location – enabling maximum utilization of the fire for their activities and needs while exposing them to a minimal amount of smoke.

[...] Yafit Kedar: "One focal issue in the debate is the location of hearths in caves occupied by early humans for long periods of time. Multilayered hearths have been found in many caves, indicating that fires had been lit at the same spot over many years. In previous studies, using a software-based model of air circulation in caves, along with a simulator of smoke dispersal in a closed space, we found that the optimal location for minimal smoke exposure in the winter was at the back of the cave. The least favorable location was the cave's entrance."

takyon writes:

Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun's closest star

Astronomers have discovered a third planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the star closest to the Sun. Dubbed Proxima Centauri d, the newly spotted world is probably a bit smaller than Earth, and well within the habitable zone of its host star — meaning that it could have oceans of liquid water that can potentially harbour life.

"It's showing that the nearest star probably has a very rich planetary system," says Guillem Anglada-Escudé, an astronomer at the Institute for Space Sciences in Barcelona, Spain, who led the team that in 2016 discovered the first planet to be seen orbiting Proxima Centauri.

Astronomer João Faria and his collaborators detected Proxima Centauri d by measuring tiny shifts in the spectrum of the star's light as the planet's gravity pulled it during orbit. The team used a state-of-the art spectrograph called ESPRESSO at the Very Large Telescope, a system of four 8.2-metre telescopes at the European Southern Observatory in Cerro Paranal, Chile. The results were published on 10 February in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

A candidate short-period sub-Earth orbiting Proxima Centauri

We detect a signal at 5.12 ± 0.04 days with a semi-amplitude of 39 ± 7 cm s⁻¹. The analysis of subsets of the ESPRESSO data, the activity indicators, and chromatic RVs suggest that this signal is not caused by stellar variability but instead by a planetary companion with a minimum mass of 0.26 ± 0.05 M_⊕ (about twice the mass of Mars) orbiting at 0.029 au from the star. The orbital eccentricity is well constrained and compatible with a circular orbit.

Previously: "Earth-Like" Exoplanet Found in Habitable Zone of Proxima Centauri
ESO Confirms Reports of Proxima Centauri Exoplanet
Dust Belts and Possible Additional Exoplanet Spotted Around Proxima Centauri
Icy second planet potentially spotted orbiting Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri b Confirmed Using VLT's ESPRESSO, Possible Third Exoplanet Found in System

Original Submission

upstart writes:

'Astronomically' high demand leads to surging Super Bowl ticket prices:

A perfect storm of factors is fueling sky high prices for Super Bowl tickets as fans clamor to be a part of Sunday's championship game in Los Angeles.

The Super Bowl is always a hot ticket, but with the Rams playing in their home stadium, die-hard Bengals fans flying in from Cincinnati, and no attendance restrictions for the first time in two years, demand is skyrocketing.

"A lot of factors are making this particular game incredibly unique," Akshay Khanna, general manager of North America for ticket retailer StubHub, told Reuters.

"But look, at the end of the day, that is just a reflection of supply and demand. There are only so many seats that are available for the Super Bowl. And the demand for a game like this is so astronomically high," Khanna added.

The "get in" price for a ticket on StubHub dipped just below $4,000 on Wednesday while the average price of tickets sold on the site was around $6,500, eye-watering amounts that left some fans with sticker shock.

[...] California buyers are driving the bulk of the sales, with residents accounting for over 50% of new ticket sales on Tuesday.

Although the Rams hope that means they will see plenty of blue and gold at SoFi Stadium on Sunday, quarterback Matthew Stafford wasn't so sure.

"I hope our fans are out there going crazy, but the Super Bowl is its own beast in terms of ticket sales," he said during a news conference. "I've seen some of those prices online and they're up there. I understand it is a lot of corporate people buying those and being able to come to the game, but hopefully we have a lot of LA Rams fans cheering for us."

takyon writes:

Restaurants scramble to serve enough chicken wings ahead of Super Bowl Sunday

upstart writes:

Female-led data hackathon runs for second year:

For the second year in a row, TrueCue has announced the winners of its women-only hackathon, which encouraged teams to use data find solutions for the topic of sustainability.

Partnering with Alteryx and the Institute of Directors, the Women + Data hackathon saw 250 women use global real-world datasets focusing on sustainable development goals to analyse a sustainability problem of their choice.

Zsanett Bahor, who was on one of the winning teams of the previous year's hackathon and is now a consulting analyst at TrueCue, said: "This year, we decided to look at sustainability because climate change and sustainability is one of the biggest challenges we face today.

"We wanted to continue on this idea of having a data set on a real-life global issue that affects everybody because then it's not specific to certain areas. It's genuinely of everyone's interest and data can be really powerful in solving these big, real-world issues."

Despite ongoing efforts to increase the number of women in the technology sector, recent research from BCS found that women only make up around 17% of IT specialists in the UK, a number that has barely moved over the past five years.

upstart writes:

Cost to rebuild US semiconductor manufacturing will keep growing:

As Washington debates spending $52 billion to start regaining America's former role as a leading semiconductor manufacturer, experts say the public and private cost over the next two decades may exceed 10 times that much—and some worry such spending may still not achieve the goal.

On Friday, the House passed the measure to appropriate the $52 billion in subsidies over five years, largely for grants to catalyze private companies' construction on U.S. soil of semiconductor fabrication factories, which are known as fabs. The Senate passed a similar bill last year. With President Joe Biden supporting the measure, some version of it may soon become law.

Some conservatives take issue with elements of the bill's semiconductor section and with other parts of the nearly 3,000-page House version. And others reject the very notion of such massive aid to private industry. But most members of Congress believe the spending is needed to ensure that the United States is not overly reliant on vulnerable overseas supplies of components that are nearly as critical as energy to both the global economy and U.S. national security.

The debate occurs amid a semiconductor shortage that is driving up inflation. It also comes as worries grow that Taiwan, where 92 percent of the world's high-end chips are made, could be invaded by China or that even a lesser crisis in that region could hamstring supplies that everyone from the Pentagon to General Motors relies upon.

But the long-term financial commitment that experts say would need to follow the $52 billion appropriation is rarely discussed.

[2022-02-11 00:49:35 UTC: UPDATE]
Video will be available on YouTube.

upstart writes:

Elon Musk to provide first update on SpaceX Starship since 2019:

SpaceX founder and reigning richest earthling Elon Musk is set to give humanity an update on his moon and Mars rocket, Starship, live from Texas this Thursday.

Starship is the next-generation spacecraft that NASA plans to use for its Artemis missions to the moon and that Musk hopes will land the first people on the red planet. He said on Twitter last week that he will present an update on the vehicle's development this Thursday, Feb. 10, at  6 p.m. PT (8 p.m. CT) from the company's Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas.

This will be the first such update we've seen from Musk on Starship in almost two and a half years. In that time, SpaceX launched and crash-landed a handful of prototypes before completing a high-altitude flight and touchdown (without then blowing up) last May.

[...] Next, the company plans to send Starship on its first orbital flight as soon as the Federal Aviation Administration completes a lengthy environmental review and issues a launch license. The FAA expects the review to be done by the end of this month, but the deadline has been pushed back once already.

Starship Update on YouTube (live at around 8:00 PM CDT, 9:00 PM EDT, 02:00 UTC).

Original Submission

upstart writes:

New Antimicrobial, Anti-Odor Coating for Clothing and Textiles:

For the first time, researchers have found a cost-effective and convenient way to apply a silver-based antimicrobial clear coating to new or existing textiles. Their method uses polyphenols[*], commonly found in food items notorious for staining clothes such as wine and chocolate. A range of textile types can be treated by the researchers' method, and items can be washed multiple times without losing the antimicrobial and therefore anti-odor property.

[...] There are many kinds of products that can be worn or applied to the body which aim to reduce body odor, but these often come with a compromise such as expense, breathability, limited choice, or something else. Some of these make use of silver, which is well known for its antimicrobial properties, but can be difficult to apply to things like clothes in an easy and efficient way.

A team led by researchers from the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering has pioneered a way to apply an antimicrobial silver coating to textiles that is cost effective, simple and has some useful implications too. They essentially used a compound known as a polyphenol [*], tannic acid (TA) specifically, to bind silver (Ag) to fabrics. Polyphenols are found in chocolate and red wine amongst other things, and are responsible for their infamous ability to stain clothing and tablecloths. Fortunately, the researchers' coating, called Ag/TA, is completely clear so it doesn't discolor textiles, but best of all, it can survive being washed.

owl writes:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/icespikes/icespikes.htm:

Ice spikes are odd ice structures that occasionally grow out of ice cube trays. Unlike some of the strange things you might find growing in your refrigerator, ice spikes are made of nothing but ice. Ice spikes are the result of physics, not biology.

Here are some pictures[*] I took of ice spikes that grew in my kitchen freezer. They look a lot like the limestone stalagmites found in caves, although there was no water dripping inside my freezer when these formed.

To see your own ice spikes, make ice cubes in an ordinary ice cube tray, in an ordinary household freezer, but using distilled water, which you can buy in most supermarkets for about a dollar a gallon. We've tried several different freezers, and almost always got some ice spikes to grow.

[*] See linked article for the pictures. Have any soylentils also seen them?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

US government seizes $3.6 billion in bitcoin tied to 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex:

Two individuals, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, were arrested in New York and are expected to appear in court Tuesday afternoon. The two are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. They face as many as 25 years in prison if convicted.

The DOJ detailed the seizure operation in a press release, explaining:

"According to court documents, Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly conspired to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen from Bitfinex's platform after a hacker breached Bitfinex's systems and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Those unauthorized transactions sent the stolen bitcoin to a digital wallet under Lichtenstein's control. Over the last five years, approximately 25,000 of those stolen bitcoin were transferred out of Lichtenstein's wallet via a complicated money laundering process that ended with some of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan. The remainder of the stolen funds, comprising more than 94,000 bitcoin, remained in the wallet used to receive and store the illegal proceeds from the hack."

"After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein. Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,000 bitcoin that had been stolen from Bitfinex. The recovered bitcoin was valued at over $3.6 billion at the time of seizure."

Notably, the amount seized corresponds to a series of transactions of Bitfinex hack-tied BTC on February 1. According to a statement of facts issued by the Department of Justice, investigators gained access to the wallets on January 31, meaning the February 1 transactions took place one day later.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Introducing a Personal Boundary for Horizon Worlds and Venues:

Today, we're announcing Personal Boundary for Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues. Personal Boundary prevents avatars from coming within a set distance of each other, creating more personal space for people and making it easier to avoid unwanted interactions. Personal Boundary will begin rolling out today everywhere inside of Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues, and will by default make it feel like there is an almost 4-foot distance between your avatar and others. Over time, we'll continue to make improvements as we learn how this affects people's experiences.

[...] A Personal Boundary prevents anyone from invading your avatar's personal space. If someone tries to enter your Personal Boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary. You won't feel it—there is no haptic feedback. This builds upon our existing hand harassment measures that were already in place, where an avatar's hands would disappear if they encroached upon someone's personal space.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

DeepMind says its new AI coding engine is as good as an average human programmer:

DeepMind has created an AI system named AlphaCode that it says “writes computer programs at a competitive level.” The Alphabet subsidiary tested its system against coding challenges used in human competitions and found that its program achieved an “estimated rank” placing it within the top 54 percent of human coders.

[...] Ten of these challenges were fed into AlphaCode in exactly the same format they’re given to humans. AlphaCode then generated a larger number of possible answers and winnowed these down by running the code and checking the output just as a human competitor might. “The whole process is automatic, without human selection of the best samples,” Yujia Li and David Choi, co-leads of the AlphaCode paper, told The Verge over email.

AlphaCode was tested on 10 of challenges that had been tackled by 5,000 users on the Codeforces site. On average, it ranked within the top 54.3 percent of responses, and DeepMind estimates that this gives the system a Codeforces Elo of 1238, which places it within the top 28 percent of users who have competed on the site in the last six months.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

A New Proposed Law Could Actually Hold Big Tech Accountable for Its Algorithms:

We’ve seen again and again the harmful, unintended consequences of irresponsibly deployed algorithms: risk assessment tools in the criminal justice system amplifying racial discrimination, false arrests powered by facial recognition, massive environmental costs of server farms, unacknowledged psychological harm from social media interactions, and new, sometimes-insurmountable hurdles in accessing public services. These actual harms are egregious, but what makes the current regime hopeless is that companies are incentivized to remain ignorant (or at least claim they to be) about the harms they expose us to, lest they be found liable.

Many of the current ideas for regulating large tech companies won’t address this ignorance or the harms it causes. While proposed antitrust laws would reckon with harms emerging from diminished competition in the digital markets, relatively small companies can also have disturbing, far-reaching power to affect our lives. Even if these proposed regulatory tools were to push tech companies away from some harmful practices, researchers, advocates and—critically —communities affected by these practices would still not have sufficient say in all the ways these companies’ algorithms shape our lives. This is especially troubling given how little information and influence we have over algorithms that control critical parts of our lives. The newly updated Algorithmic Accountability Act from Sen. Ron Wyden, Sen. Cory Booker, and Rep. Yvette Clarke could change this dynamic—and give us all an opportunity to reclaim some power over the algorithms that control critical parts of our lives.