SoylentNews

upstart writes:

Intel buys Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion to diversify foundry business:

Intel has agreed to pay $5.4 billion to buy Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli foundry that focuses on specialty processes to make chips for imaging, power management, and wireless communications.

The acquisition is Intel's latest move to add capacity and customers to its new foundry division, which focuses on making chips for other companies. CEO Pat Gelsinger is betting that by expanding capacity and making more semiconductors—not just its own—his company can claw its way [to] get back to the leading edge. Today, just two firms, TSMC and Samsung, make the world's most advanced chips.

[...] Intel and Tower said they expect the transaction to be completed in about a year provided that it gets approved by regulators.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

U.S. to inspect new 787 Dreamliners, says Boeing cannot self-certify:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday said it would perform final inspections on new Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, and will not allow the planemaker to self-certify the jets.

The U.S. aviation regulator said it notified Boeing of the decision that it will retain the authority to issue airworthiness certificates until it is confident "Boeing's quality control and manufacturing processes consistently produce 787s that meet FAA design standards."

Boeing said it "will continue to work transparently through (the FAA's) detailed and rigorous processes... We will continue to engage with the FAA to ensure we meet their expectations and all applicable requirements."

Boeing suspended deliveries of the 787 in late May after the FAA raised concerns about its proposed inspection method. The FAA had issued two airworthiness directives to address production issues for in-service airplanes and identified a new issue in July.

Deliveries have remained halted as U.S. regulators reviewed repairs and inspections. Deliveries are expected to remain frozen months longer.

Original Submission

Woman Appears Cured of HIV After Umbilical-Cord Blood Transplant

upstart writes:

Woman Appears Cured of HIV After Umbilical-Cord Blood Transplant:

A woman in the New York City area appears to have been cured of an HIV infection, joining a small group of people whose recovery is providing researchers with road maps to beat one of nature's most resilient viruses.

The woman has shown no detectable signs of the human immunodeficiency virus in extensive testing since she stopped antiretroviral treatment in October 2020 following a transplant of stem cells with a rare genetic mutation that blocks HIV invasion, her doctors said.

The doctors said they consider her HIV to be in long-term remission, suggesting a cure if it holds. That would mean she has no virus able to replicate in her body, unlike people who have HIV but stay healthy by keeping the virus at low levels with long-term drug treatment.

"Everything is looking very promising,"

upstart writes:

Elon Musk quietly donated nearly $6 billion last year. Where did it go?:

In an inconspicuous fashion — via a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, disclosed on Monday that he gave nearly $6 billion worth of the company's shares to charity last year, instantly propelling him into the upper ranks of philanthropic donors.

But the document gave little information about where he directed his wealth, the DealBook newsletter reports.

[...] The gift came as Mr. Musk sold more than $16 billion worth of shares in November and December, much of which was meant to cover tax obligations after exercising stock options.

[...] Several observers noted that weeks before his donation, Mr. Musk tweeted that he would give $6 billion if the United Nations could prove that money could help solve world hunger. Days afterward, the U.N.'s World Food Program outlined how it would spend $6.6 billion to help avert famine.

Mr. Musk's other disclosed philanthropic efforts include millions in gifts to Texas municipalities and a $100 million prize for developing technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Study highlights worldwide disparities in treatment rates for major depressive disorder: Meta-analysis suggests need for scaling up treatment for this severe depression in some low and lower-middle income countries:

In recent years, national and global initiatives have made increasing efforts to address the tremendous burden posed by major depressive disorder. However, treatment rates remain low. Analyses that combine results from studies on depression treatment from different regions can help identify opportunities for improvement. However, many such analyses do not adequately account for variations in study methods that make results from different studies difficult to compare.

To provide further clarity, Ferrari and colleagues conducted an updated analysis of 149 studies on treatment for major depressive disorder conducted in 84 countries between 2000 and 2021. Applying a statistical method known as Bayesian meta-regression analysis, they combined the studies to examine treatment rates around the world.

The findings of this meta-analysis suggest that treatment rates remain low worldwide, and it highlights disparities in treatment between countries with different resource levels. In particular, use of mental health services by people with major depressive disorder is estimated to be 33 percent in high-income countries and just eight percent in low and lower-middle income countries.

Rates of treatment considered to be minimally sufficient for treating major depressive disorder are lower, estimated at 23 percent for high-income countries and 3 percent in low and lower-middle income countries.

Journal Reference:
Modhurima Moitra, Damian Santomauro, Pamela Y. Collins, et al. The global gap in treatment coverage for major depressive disorder in 84 countries from 2000–2019: A systematic review and Bayesian meta-regression analysis, PLOS Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003901)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Akamai To Acquire Linode to Provide Businesses with a Developer-friendly and Massively-distributed Platform to Build, Run and Secure Next Generation Applications:

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the world's most trusted solution to power and protect digital experiences, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Linode, one of the easiest-to-use and most trusted infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform providers.

Modern digital experiences, including virtual environments like the metaverse, are created through the convergence of media, entertainment, technology, ecommerce, financial services, and online games. Akamai has been a key partner to the world’s leaders in these industries for decades by powering and protecting applications in today’s multi-cloud, multi-platform world. Together with Linode, which has made it simple, affordable and accessible for developers to consume cloud computing, Akamai will become the world’s most distributed compute platform, from cloud to edge.

“The opportunity to combine Linode’s developer-friendly cloud computing capabilities with Akamai’s market-leading edge platform and security services is transformational for Akamai,” said Dr. Tom Leighton, chief executive officer and co-founder, Akamai Technologies. “Akamai has been a pioneer in the edge computing business for over 20 years, and today we are excited to begin a new chapter in our evolution by creating a unique cloud platform to build, run and secure applications from the cloud to the edge. This a big win for developers who will now be able to build the next generation of applications on a platform that delivers unprecedented scale, reach, performance, reliability and security.​”

upstart writes:

IBM Execs Call Older Workers 'Dinobabies' in Age Bias Lawsuit:

Internal emails show IBM executives calling older workers "dinobabies" and discussing plans to make them "an extinct species," according to a Friday filing in an ongoing age discrimination lawsuit against the company.

The documents were submitted as evidence of IBM's efforts "to oust older employees from its workforce," and replace them with millennial workers, the plaintiff alleged. It's the latest development in a legal battle that first began in 2018, when former employees sued IBM after the company fired tens of thousands of workers over 40-years-old.

One high-ranking executive, whose name was redacted from the lawsuit, said IBM had a "dated maternal workforce."

"This is what must change," the email continues, per the filing. "They really don't understand social or engagement. Not digital natives. A real threat for us."

[...] IBM spokesman Chris Mumma told Insider that the company has "never engaged in systemic age discrimination," and said "IBM separated employees because of changing business conditions, not because of their age."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Experiment With Turnstiles of Single Electrons Lights Way Towards New Power Standard:

The world's most commonly used system of measurement, the International System of Units (SI), was redefined in 2019. Since then, units have needed to be defined in terms of the constants of Nature – that is, Nature's rules that are fixed and of no uncertainty, such as the speed of light – and not in terms of arbitrary references.

This has meant that new research for relating the many units of the system to the constants through experimental realizations has been called for.

"The redefinition has caused a need for new realizations," says Professor Jukka Pekola.

Researchers at Aalto University have now found a promising new way to link the watt (the unit of power) to the constants of Nature. They believe their method could show the way towards a new power standard, that is, a new way to produce an apriori known amount of power against which other power sources and detectors can be compared.

The researchers have developed a device that converts frequency to power. Frequency is a quantity that can be set with low uncertainty, and therefore it provides a solid basis for a new standard.

...] In the experiment, power is produced with a single-electron transistor in its turnstile operation. This device was previously proved by Pekola to work as a potential standard for the ampere, the unit of electrical current. It is constituted by a small metallic island, source and drain leads and a gate electrode, and it can address very small powers.

Journal Reference:
Marco Marín-Suárez, Joonas T. Peltonen, Dmitry S. Golubev, et al. An electron turnstile for frequency-to-power conversion, Nature Nanotechnology (DOI: 10.1038/s41565-021-01053-5)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Emoji web addresses are now a thing (on Opera, anyway):

The humble browser address bar just got an emoji-forward glow up.

Opera announced Monday that it has fully integrated with Yat, an emoji-based identification system that involves people buying and selling emoji. The latest version of the Chromium-based browser now lets users enter emoji in place of standard domains in the web address bar.

If the string of emoji corresponds to an existing Yat, the browser will take users to the associated website. For example, instead of typing out the URL of digital asset management firm Arrington XRP Capital, an Opera user could, if so inclined, enter 🚀🌕 into their web address bar.

"All Opera browsers have, in partnership with @whatsyouryat, become the first and only web browsers to enable emoji-only based web addresses," wrote Opera. "Give it a try by visiting ⛓🕸👀!"

[...] Opera's desktop web browser essentially now integrates with Yat's API.

That people can even buy emoji in the first place might come as a surprise, but Yats aren't themselves new (and to be clear: Yat users are paying to have Yat, a Nashville-based private company, associate them with its emoji; and crucially not claiming the emoji as their own in any context that doesn't involve Yat or the Yat API). Emoji strings have sold from anywhere from a few dollars to, in rare cases, hundreds of thousands. And, since July of 2021, people have been able to use emoji in the web address bar of the mobile Opera Browser on Android and iOS.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Intel is officially in the bitcoin mining business now:

Intel has announced its plans to fully embrace blockchain technology and finally enter the bitcoin mining space with brand new chips that will be available later this year.

In a new blog post, the chip giant explained that it has developed a roadmap of energy-efficient accelerators that will ship in 2022.

Intel is also conscious of the fact that "some blockchains require an enormous amount of computing power" which is why the company is focusing its efforts on developing the most energy-efficient computing technologies at scale.

So far, Argo Blockchain, BLOCK (formerly Square) and GRID infrastructure are among its first customers for this new product. As the company's new architecture is implemented on a tiny piece of silicon, it will have a minimal impact to the supply of other Intel processors.

[...] According to a report from Tom's Hardware, quite a bit is already known about the chip giant's new Bitcoin-mining hardware as the news outlet discovered a reference to its Bonanza Mine chips in a listing for a presentation at this year's International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC). However, Intel has already moved on to its second generation Bonanza Mine chip which is known as BMZ2.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Android 13 virtualization lets Pixel 6 run Windows 11, Linux distributions

The first Android 13 developer preview may have felt a bit underwhelming, but there's a hidden gem with full virtualization possible on hardware such as the Google Pixel 6 smartphone.

What that means is that it is now possible to run virtually any operating system including Windows 11, Linux distributions such as Ubuntu or Arch Linux Arm on the Google Tensor-powered phone, and do so at near-native speed.

[...] But why did Google enable virtualization in Android? It's unlikely they just wanted to let users install Linux or Windows on the phone. Mishaal Rahman addressed this issue about two months ago:

... This is because hypervisors may or may not be present on a device, and when they are, they're often not even used for their intended purpose, which is to run an operating system in a virtual machine! Instead, they're used for things like enhancing the security of the kernel (or at least trying to) and running miscellaneous code (such as third-party code for DRM, cryptography, and other closed-source binaries) outside of the Android OS.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Biologists Investigate Smallest Propeller on Earth – Used by One of the Fastest Organisms on the Planet:

University of Exeter scientists have discovered new information about the tiny propellers used by single-cell organisms called archaea.

Like bacteria, archaea are found in a vast range of habitats – including inside human bodies – but unlike bacteria they are not known to cause disease.

Some archaea propel themselves to incredible speeds by rotating a spiral-shaped filament called an archaellum. Using a powerful cryo-electron microscope, the new study examined this closer than ever before.

The research team – which included the University of Regensburg – focussed on Methanocaldococcus villosus, a species found near underwater volcanoes off Iceland, where water temperatures can reach about 80°C.

"M. villosus swims at a speed of about 500 body lengths per second," said Dr. Lavinia Gambelli, of Exeter's Living Systems Institute (LSI).

upstart writes:

Drones as Big as 747s Will Fly Cargo Around the World With Low Emissions, Startup Says:

The global supply chain is currently experiencing all kinds of glitches, from material shortages to labor shortages and beyond. Moving goods from point A to point B has become more expensive, and there's no quick fix in sight. But a San Diego-based startup plans to meet some of the demand for air freight with an innovative solution: autonomous cargo drones as big as a Boeing 747. And customers are jumping on board.

Natilus, founded in 2016, this week announced $6 billion worth of pre-orders for over 440 of its aircraft. The company says its blended wing design can fit 60 percent more cargo than existing freight aircraft while cutting costs by 60 percent and with 50 percent less carbon emissions.

Aleksey Matyushev, the company's CEO, pointed out in a press release that moving freight by sea is 13 times cheaper than moving it by air, but takes 50 times as long. "Natilus intends to revolutionize the transport industry by providing the timeliness of air freight at an affordable cost reduction of 60 percent, making air cargo transportation substantially more competitive," he said.

How will they do this? Much of the savings will reportedly come from the aircraft's design.

upstart writes:

A diamondlike structure gives some starfish skeletons their strength:

[...] Beneath a starfish's skin lies a skeleton made of pebbly growths, called ossicles, which mostly consist of the mineral calcite. Calcite is usually fragile, and even more so when it is porous. But the hole-riddled ossicles of the knobby starfish (Protoreaster nodosus) are strengthened through an unexpected internal arrangement, researchers report in the Feb. 11 Science.

[...] Li and colleagues used an electron microscope to zoom in on ossicles from several dozen dead knobby starfish. At a scale of 50 micrometers, about half the width of a human hair, the seemingly featureless body of each ossicle gives way to a meshlike pattern that mirrors how carbon atoms are arranged in a diamond.

But the diamondlike lattice alone doesn't fully explain how the ossicles stay strong.

upstart writes:

HMRC seizes NFT for first time in £1.4m fraud case:

The UK tax authority has seized three Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) as part of a probe into a suspected a VAT fraud involving 250 alleged fake companies.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) said three people had been arrested on suspicion of attempting to defraud it of £1.4m.

The authority said it was the first UK law enforcement to seize an NFT.

NFTs are assets in the digital world that can be bought and sold, but which have no tangible form of their own.

Meanwhile....