SoylentNews

upstart writes:

You'll need a Microsoft account to set up future versions of Windows 11 Pro:

Now that Windows 11's first major post-release update has been issued, Microsoft has started testing a huge collection of new features, UI changes, and redesigned apps in the latest Windows Insider preview for Dev channel users. By and large, the changes are significant and useful—there's an overhauled Task Manager, folders for pinned apps in the Start menu, the renewed ability to drag items into the Taskbar (as you could in Windows 10), improvements to the Do Not Disturb and Focus modes, new touchscreen gestures, and a long list of other fixes and enhancements.

But tucked away toward the bottom of the changelog is one unwelcome addition: like the Home edition of Windows 11, the Pro version will now require an Internet connection and a Microsoft account during setup. In the current version of Windows 11, you could still create a local user account during setup by not connecting your PC to the Internet—something that also worked in the Home version of Windows 10 but was removed in 11. That workaround will no longer be available in either edition going forward, barring a change in Microsoft's plans.

While most devices do require a sign-in to fully enable app stores, cloud storage, and cross-device sharing and syncing, Windows 11 will soon stand alone as the only major consumer OS that requires account sign-in to enable even basic functionality.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

James Webb Space Telescope Locked Onto Guide Star for High Accuracy Mirror Alignment:

After starting the mirror alignment with Webb's first detection of starlight in the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the telescope team is hard at work on the next steps for commissioning the telescope. To make more progress, the team needs to use another instrument, the Fine Guidance Sensor, to lock onto a guide star and keep the telescope pointed to high accuracy. We have asked René Doyon and Nathalie Ouellette of the Université de Montréal to explain how Webb uses its Canadian instrument in this process.

"After being powered on January 28, 2022, and undergoing successful aliveness and functional tests, Webb's Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) has now successfully performed its very first guiding operation! Together with the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS), the FGS is one of Canada's contributions to the mission.

"To ensure Webb stays locked on its celestial targets, the FGS measures the exact position of a guide star in its field of view 16 times per second and sends adjustments to the telescope's fine steering mirror about three times per second. In addition to its speed, the FGS also needs to be incredibly precise. The degree of precision with which it can detect changes in the pointing to a celestial object is the equivalent of a person in New York City being able to see the eye motion of someone blinking at the Canadian border 500 kilometers (311 miles) away!

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Discovery of key protein in malaria parasite opens door to novel treatment:

An international team has discovered a protein that plays a key biological role in a parasite that causes malaria. Deactivating this protein reduces in vitro growth of Plasmodium falciparum, the protozoa behind the most virulent form of the disease, by more than 75%. The team, led by Professor Dave Richard of Université Laval, recently published details of the discovery in the scientific journal mBio.

"This breakthrough could lead to the development of a treatment that targets a function of the parasite that no malaria drug has yet exploited," said Richard, professor in the Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval and researcher at CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Centre.

Plasmodium falciparum is transmitted to humans through mosquito bites. After infecting the host's liver it circulates in the blood, hiding inside red blood cells and thereby avoiding attacks from the immune system. The parasite's main food source is hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen from the red blood cells to the rest of the body. The parasite digests the hemoglobin in structures called digestive vacuoles.

"The protein we discovered, PfPX1, is involved in transporting hemoglobin to these digestive vacuoles," said Professor Richard. "When we deactivate PfPX1, we deprive the parasite of its main source of amino acids. This has an impact on its growth and survival."

Journal Reference:
A Phosphoinositide-Binding Protein Acts in the Trafficking Pathway of Hemoglobin in the Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum, mBio (DOI: 10.1128/mbio.03239-21)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Three major browsers are about to hit version 100. Will websites cope?

This February Google put out Chrome 98, closely followed by Mozilla releasing Firefox 97. Soon both will hit version 100.

The memory of the web industry is short. This has happened before: when Opera reached version 10 in 2009, it caused problems, and just three years later, Firefox 10 faced similar issues.

And it will happen again. Google is planning to release Chrome 100 at the beginning of April, and Firefox 100 should follow in May.

Google anticipates that there will be some issues, so ever since Chrome 96 it has offered a facility to force the version number to 100: just go to chrome://flags and set #force-major-version-to-100.

Also at XDA Developers.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Corn ethanol no better—and probably worse—than burning gasoline, study says:

For over a decade, the US has blended ethanol with gasoline in an attempt to reduce the overall carbon pollution produced by fossil fuel-powered cars and trucks. But a new study says that the practice may not be achieving its goals. In fact, burning ethanol made from corn—the major source in the US—may be worse for the climate than just burning gasoline alone.

Corn drove demand for land and fertilizer far higher than previous assessments had estimated. Together, the additional land and fertilizer drove up ethanol's carbon footprint to the point where the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions—from seed to tank—were higher than that of gasoline. Some researchers predicted [*] this might happen, but the new paper provides a comprehensive and retrospective look at the real-world results of the policy.

Proponents have long argued that corn-based ethanol bolsters farm incomes while providing a domestic source of renewable liquid fuel, while critics have said that its status as a carbon-reducing gasoline additive relies on questionable accounting. Based on the new study, both sides may be right.

Journal Reference:
Mark Z. Jacobson. Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security, Energy & Environmental Science (DOI: 10.1039/B809990C)

Original Submission

Freeman submitted a story which became:

Facial recognition firm Clearview AI tells investors it's seeking massive expansion beyond law enforcement:

The facial recognition company Clearview AI is telling investors it is on track to have 100 billion facial photos in its database within a year, enough to ensure "almost everyone in the world will be identifiable," according to a financial presentation from December obtained by The Washington Post.

Those images — equivalent to 14 photos for each of the 7 billion people on Earth — would help power a surveillance system that has been used for arrests and criminal investigations by thousands of law enforcement and government agencies around the world.

And the company wants to expand beyond scanning faces for the police, saying in the presentation that it could monitor "gig economy" workers and is researching a number of new technologies that could identify someone based on how they walk, detect their location from a photo or scan their fingerprints from afar.

The 55-page "pitch deck," the contents of which have not been reported previously, reveals surprising details about how the company, whose work already is controversial, is positioning itself for a major expansion, funded in large part by government contracts and the taxpayers the system would be used to monitor.

The document was made for fundraising purposes, and it is unclear how realistic its goals might be. The company said that its "index of faces" has grown from 3 billion images to more than 10 billion since early 2020 and that its data collection system now ingests 1.5 billion images a month.

It's a long-format story that is very-well-supported and worth reading in its entirety.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Australian encryption laws used to force provider to help in homicide case:

When it comes to Australia's encryption laws, two out of the three arms can now be publicly said to have been used, following the release of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 -- Annual Report 2020-21 this week.

In previous years, agencies had only used voluntary Technical Assistance Requests (TAR) to get service providers to help them, but the latest report shows NSW Police in the past year also turned to the first of the compulsory notices available.

That request, used in a homicide investigation, is the first use of a compulsory Technical Assistance Notice (TAN) to force a provider to use a capability they already possess. Assistance notices issued by state-level law enforcement are reviewed by the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police (AFP).

This leaves the compulsory Technical Capability Notice (TCN) as the only form of notice yet to be publicly disclosed as used. The TCN forces providers to build a new capability for agencies and requires sign-off from the federal Attorney-General and Minister for Communications. The report said no TCNs were sought across the reporting period.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A Network of Fake Test Answer Sites Is Trying to Incriminate Students – The Markup:

When Kurt Wilson, a computer science student at the University of Central Florida, heard that his university was using a controversial online proctoring tool called Honorlock, he immediately wanted to learn more.

The company, whose business has boomed during the pandemic, promises to ensure that remote students don't cheat on exams through AI-powered software used by students that "monitors each student's exam session and alerts a live, US-based test proctor if it detects any potential problems." The software can scan students' faces to verify their identity, track specific phrases that their computer microphone captures, and even promises to search for and remove test questions that leak online.

One feature from Honorlock especially piqued Wilson's interest. The company, according to its materials, provides a way to track cheating students through what Honorlock calls "seed sites" or others call "honeypots"—fake websites that remotely tattle on students who visit them during exams.

[...] But some experts in the ethics of education worry techniques like honeypot websites simply go too far.

upstart writes:

New Atomic Clocks Measure Time Dilation of Einstein's General Relativity at Millimeter Scale:

JILA physicists have measured Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, or more specifically, the effect called time dilation, at the smallest scale ever, showing that two tiny atomic clocks, separated by just a millimeter or the width of a sharp pencil tip, tick at different rates.

The experiments, described in the February 17, 2022, issue of Nature, suggest how to make atomic clocks 50 times more precise than today's best designs and offer a route to perhaps revealing how relativity and gravity interact with quantum mechanics, a major quandary in physics.

[...] "The most important and exciting result is that we can potentially connect quantum physics with gravity, for example, probing complex physics when particles are distributed at different locations in the curved space-time," NIST/JILA Fellow Jun Ye said. "For timekeeping, it also shows that there is no roadblock to making clocks 50 times more precise than today — which is fantastic news."

upstart writes:

Meta policy head Clegg receives promotion to be on par with Zuckerberg and Sandberg:

Meta, formerly Facebook, has promoted its top policy executive Nick Clegg to a newly created president of global affairs role.

Clegg has worked at Meta for over three years. Prior to joining Facebook as its global affairs vice president in 2018, Clegg had served as Britain's deputy prime minister.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a post on his personal Facebook page, said Clegg's new role will see him lead Meta on all of its policy matters. It will also put him "at the level" of Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer.

"Nick will now lead our company on all our policy matters, including how we interact with governments as they consider adopting new policies and regulations, as well as how we make the case publicly for our products and our work," Zuckerberg said.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

NASA drops plans to fly Earth science instrument as commercial hosted payload - SpaceNews:

An Earth science instrument selected by NASA several years ago to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite may instead fly on a standalone spacecraft because of a lack of hosting opportunities.

NASA issued a solicitation Feb. 9 seeking information for what it called the GeoCarb Access to Space project. NASA is looking for information on prospective providers of spacecraft that could host the GeoCarb instrument for a launch that NASA would provide by the end of 2024.

NASA selected GeoCarb in 2016 as part of its Earth Venture line of missions and instruments. GeoCarb will monitor greenhouse gases as well as plant health and vegetation stress in North and South America from approximately 85 degrees west in geostationary orbit.

The agency's original plan was to fly GeoCarb as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite in GEO. For a time, NASA had an agreement with SES Government Solutions to host GeoCarb on an SES satellite.

upstart writes:

Microsoft's 'Surface Laptop 5' could get latest AMD mobile processors for the first time:

Microsoft hasn't announced the Surface Laptop 5 yet, but a new leak points to it having an option to use AMD's latest line of Ryzen CPUs.

A site called Windows Prime has posted what Windows watcher Paul Thurrott reckons to be an official specs sheet for the forthcoming Surface Laptop 5.

[...] The Surface Laptop 5 would be a significant departure on the AMD front, with the specs sheet indicating the 13.5-inch and 15-inch models would be available with Ryzen 6000 series mobile processors that AMD announced in January at CES.

The 13.5-inch Surface Laptop 5 would come with a 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 6680U processor, while the 15-inch model would come with an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 6980U processor – and, of course, integrated Radeon graphics in both. Battery life is quoted at 'up to' 21 hours and 19.5 hours respectively.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It):

I used to be able to understand 99% of the dialogue in Hollywood films. But over the past 10 years or so, I've noticed that percentage has dropped significantly — and it's not due to hearing loss on my end. It's gotten to the point where I find myself occasionally not being able to parse entire lines of dialogue when I see a movie in a theater, and when I watch things at home, I've defaulted to turning the subtitles on to make sure I don't miss anything crucial to the plot.

Knowing I'm not alone in having these experiences, I reached out to several professional sound editors, designers, and mixers, many of whom have won Oscars for their work on some of Hollywood's biggest films, to get to the bottom of what's going on. One person refused to talk to me, saying it would be "professional suicide" to address this topic on the record. Another agreed to talk, but only under the condition that they remain anonymous. But several others spoke openly about the topic, and it quickly became apparent that this is a familiar subject among the folks in the sound community, since they're the ones who often bear the brunt of complaints about dialogue intelligibility.

"It's not easy to mix a movie," says Jaime Baksht, who took home an Oscar for his work on last year's excellent "Sound of Metal" and previously worked on Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma." "Everybody thinks you're just moving levers, but it's not like that."

owl writes:

https://passo.uno/why-collect-read-old-computer-manuals/:

It's my ritual: every time I enter a secondhand bookshop, I go straight to the Sciences section and search for old computer manuals. They're very hard to come by, as their owners tend to throw them away once they stop using a particular device or piece of software. Manuals also happen not to be the most engaging read for most people, which adds to their rarity; few want to peruse an old IBM AS/400 handbook while laying at the beach.

Disregarding old manuals as useless piles of paper does them a grave disservice, though. Many of them are admittedly awful or outright boring, but some are ripe with forgotten tech lore and high-quality design. The writers of old manuals often enjoyed more editorial resources than tech writers are used to today, and produced handbooks and guides with greater care, because they couldn't afford gross inaccuracies to go to press.

How old is your oldest computer manual?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Windows 11 no longer the fastest OS for Alder Lake: Linux 5.16 on Core i9-12900K emerges winner in most benchmarks:

Intel Alder Lake is generally touted to run best under Windows 11 given the scheduling improvements in the new OS and the new Intel Thread Director technology that helps assign corresponding tasks to the P-cores and E-cores. However, now it looks like Linux could be the better OS of choice to extract the maximum performance from processors such as the Core i9-12900K.

Since launch, Windows 11 was considered necessary for optimal performance of the Core i9-12900K. That changes now with the advent of Linux kernel 5.16 which brings better hybrid handling and other improvements. The Linux kernel 5.16 also comes with new FUTEX2 (fast user mutex) syscalls that should help with improved gaming performance, particularly for Windows games running on Wine.

Phoronix has tested the performance of the Core i9-12900K in both Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Intel's own Clear Linux OSs running the 5.16 stable kernel version. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS with the latest 5.17-rc3 kernel and current LTS version with 5.15 kernel were also used along with Windows 11 Pro x64 updated as of February. The test platform was an Asus ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming Wi-Fi motherboard with 2x 32 GB of DDR5-4400 RAM and GT1 integrated graphics in Alder Lake-S.

[...] In a total of 104 tests, Windows 11 had leads only in 13.5% of the tests while Clear Linux 35810 with the 5.16 kernel led the majority (63.5%) of the tests. Ubuntu 22.04 with the 5.15 kernel version lost in 53.8% of the benchmarks indicating that Linux users who wish to make the most of Intel Alder Lake should upgrade to the latest kernel.

Original Submission