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upstart writes:

Samsung responds to app-throttling discovery, promises to ship an off switch:

Samsung has responded to reports that it is throttling thousands of apps on the Galaxy line of smartphones.

With the launch of the Galaxy S22, users found the packed-in "Game Optimizing Service" contained a list of approximately 10,000 apps that were being throttled. This list is basically every popular, well-known app you can think of, covering everything from games to core Samsung apps like the home screen. The only apps the service seemingly didn't target were benchmark apps, which means benchmark ratings are inaccurately reporting how much power the most-used apps have access to. Modifying a benchmark app like Geekbench to be disguised as a normal app leads to CPU scores dropping as much as 46 percent. The new Galaxy S22 isn't the only smartphone with this throttling feature; it goes back as far as the Galaxy S10.

Samsung gave a statement to The Verge today, saying, "We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps." The spokesperson continued, "The Game Optimizing Service (GOS) has been designed to help game apps achieve a great performance while managing device temperature effectively. GOS does not manage the performance of non-gaming apps."

[...] Samsung is at least promising to ship an off switch, but that part of its story doesn't make a ton of sense either. If this throttling was really needed in the first place, why is Samsung going to produce a patch that lets users turn it off? If Samsung used the battery life excuse, that is a variable where a user control feature would be a good idea. Sometimes you will need more battery life, and sometimes you're close to a charger and don't care. But a variable slider for heat is rather strange. Heat is either able to be dissipated or not, and is either damaging to the components or not. It's still hard to imagine why this code was written in the first place if it isn't just there to game benchmarks.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

More Beer in the Glass With Physics: How Water-Repellent Coatings Can Reduce Foaming:

Foam formation and a long lifetime of the foam is desired for beer in a glass, for example — but foam should be avoided in beer bottling in order to speed up the bottling process. Foam formation is also often undesirable in other industrial processes, especially if it leads to spillages and environmental contamination.

In foams, adjacent air bubbles are separated from each other by a thin film of liquid. To generate and stabilize the foam, surface-active substances such as surfactants, often lipids or proteins are added.

Many liquids, such as beer and soaps, contain such surface-active molecules which stabilize foam. To prevent foaming, additional chemicals must therefore be added, such as oils, waxes, or microparticles. These help neighboring air bubbles to fuse together quickly, causing foam to break down rapidly.

upstart writes:

The rat problem in Washington, DC, is so bad, two people got hantavirus:

Many people might already think of the nation's capital as a political rat's nest, teeming with rat-related features, like underground networks and crowded backrooms where any faint smell of betrayal could send lawmakers scurrying. But Washington, DC, is also a den of literal rats. And it's creating a concerning risk of viral spillover for residents.

In a report released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, DC health officials ratted out the first two known cases of hantavirus spillover in the city. The virus festers quietly in rats and other rodent populations, but in humans it can cause potentially deadly respiratory and hemorrhagic diseases. Humans pick up the infection by direct contact with rodent urine or nest dust or by breathing in aerosolized viral particles from urine, droppings, or saliva. There's also the possibility that the virus can spread from rat bites, but this is less common. Once in a human, the virus almost never jumps from human to human.

upstart writes:

New UCIe Chiplet Standard Supported by Intel, AMD, and Arm:

A broad range of industry stalwarts, like Intel, AMD, Arm, TSMC, and Samsung, among others, introduced the new Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe) consortium today with the goal of standardizing die-to-die interconnects between chiplets with an open-source design, thus reducing costs and fostering a broader ecosystem of validated chiplets. In the end, the UCIe standard aims to be just as ubiquitous and universal as other connectivity standards, like USB, PCIe, and NVMe, while providing exceptional power and performance metrics for chiplet connections.

The benefits of chiplets, like reduced costs and using different types of process nodes in a single package, are well known and essential as chipmakers grapple with increasingly difficult scaling issues in the waning light of Moore's Law. The long-term vision for chiplets has always been for chipmakers to be able to develop their own types of specialized chiplets and then pair them with off-the-shelf chiplet designs from other companies, thus allowing them to build their own chips in Lego-like fashion to improve time to market while reducing costs.

However, the lack of a standardized connection between chiplets has led to a wide range of customized proprietary interconnects, so modern chiplets certainly aren't plug-and-play with other designs. Additionally, the industry has long suffered from a glaring lack of standardized validation and verification for chiplet designs and interconnects, making an off-the-shelf chiplet ecosystem impossible.

upstart writes:

Detailed Supercomputer Simulation of the Universe Creates Structures Very Similar to the Milky Way:

In their pursuit of understanding cosmic evolution, scientists rely on a two-pronged approach. Using advanced instruments, astronomical surveys attempt to look farther and farther into space (and back in time) to study the earliest periods of the Universe. At the same time, scientists create simulations that attempt to model how the Universe has evolved based on our understanding of physics. When the two match, astrophysicists and cosmologists know they are on the right track!

In recent years, increasingly-detailed simulations have been made using increasingly sophisticated supercomputers, which have yielded increasingly accurate results. Recently, an international team of researchers led by the University of Helsinki conducted the most accurate simulations to date. Known as SIBELIUS-DARK, these simulations accurately predicted the evolution of our corner of the cosmos from the Big Bang to the present day.

[...] This simulation is the first study conducted as part of the "Simulations Beyond the Local Universe" (SIBELIUS) project and was performed using the DiRAC COSmology MAchine (COSMA), a distributed computer network operated by the ICC. The simulation covers a volume of space up to a distance of 600 million light-years from Earth and is represented by over 130 billion simulated 'particles', which required thousands of computers several weeks to produce.

upstart writes:

NASA finds each state has its own climatic threshold for flu outbreaks:

What triggers an outbreak of the influenza virus? A new study of the flu in the 48 contiguous U.S. states, using data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua satellite, has found that the answer is closely tied to local weather—specifically, to low humidity—and varies from state to state.

Average humidity varies widely across the United States, but even in the most humid states, it begins to drop as winter approaches. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the University of Southern California correlated AIRS measurements of water vapor in the lower atmosphere with flu case estimates for each week from 2003 to 2015. The researchers found that in each state, there is a specific level of low humidity that may signal a flu outbreak is imminent. When this threshold is crossed each year, a large increase in flu cases follows within two or three weeks, on average.

Journal Reference:
E. Serman, H. Th. Thrastarson, M. Franklin, J. Teixeira. Spatial Variation in Humidity and the Onset of Seasonal Influenza Across the Contiguous United States GeoHealth Volume 6, Issue 2 (DOI: 10.1029/2021GH000469)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Experts urge EU not to force insecure certificates in web browsers:

A group of 38 cybersecurity professors and IT experts worldwide, together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), have cosigned a letter to EU regulators that warns of a proposal that could expose internet users to cybercrime.

More specifically, the experts' highlight problems in the proposed amendment to Article 45 concerning establishing a framework for a European Digital Identity.

The particular provision requires web browsers like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox to accept QWACs (Qualified Website Authentication Certificates), which practically compels browser developers and security advocates to ease their security stance.

[...] As part of the amendment to Article 45, EU lawmakers want to force browsers to accept QWACs certificates to improve authentication on the Web and create a more streamlined system of GDPR compliance, owner information, and data transaction guarantees.

QWACs combine TLS and electronic ID into a single certificate, binding identity with TLS deployment, theoretically creating a transparent and technologically neutral system.

[...] The letter sent to members of the European Parliament warns of technical implementation flaws in the QWACs, which are the very reason standing in the way of its mass adoption since 2014 when the new website authentication system was first introduced.

Original Submission

Raspberry Pi Alternative Banana Pi Reveals Powerful New Board

upstart writes:

Raspberry Pi Alternative Banana Pi Reveals Powerful New Board:

Banana Pi has revealed a new board in its BPI-R2 Pro category. In the style of the Raspberry PiCompute Module 3 the new board requires a carrier board to break out all of the ports on offer. The compute module comes with a powerful eight-core processor, up to 8GB of RAM and 32GB eMMC, while the carrier board includes some interesting breakout options.

At the core of the Banana Pi board is a Rockchip RK3588 SoC. This brings together four Arm Cortex-A76 cores at up to 2.6 GHz with four Cortex-A55 cores at 1.8 GHz in Arm's new DynamIQ configuration - essentially big.LITTLE in a single fully integrated cluster. It uses an 8nm process.

The board is accompanied by an Arm Mali-G610 MP4 Odin GPU with support for OpenGLES 1.1, 2.0, and 3.2, OpenCL up to 2.2, and Vulkan1.2. There's a 2D graphics engine supporting resolutions up to 8K too, with four separate displays catered for (one of which can be 8K 30FPS), and up to 8GB of RAM, though the SoC supports up to 32GB. Built-in storage is catered for by up to 128GB of eMMC flash. It offers 8K 30fps video encoding in the H.265, VP9, AVS2 and (at 30fps) H.264 codecs.

Firefly is Working on a Rockchip RK3588 Mini-ITX Motherboard (ITX3588J)

takyon writes:

Firefly is working on a Rockchip RK3588 Mini-ITX motherboard (ITX3588J)

After Radxa ROCK5 Pico-ITX SBC and Banana Pi RK3588 SoM and devkit, Firefly ITX3588J mini-ITX motherboard is the third hardware platform we've seen with Rockchip RK3588 octa-core Cortex-A76/A55 processor.

The board will be interesting to people wanting an Arm PC or workstation as the mini-ITX form factor will allow the board to be fitted to a standard enclosure, and there's plenty of resources and I/Os with up to 32GB RAM, four SATA ports, multiple 8K/4K video outputs and inputs, dual Gigabit Ethernet, WiFI 6 and Bluetooth 5.0, a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, and more.

Also at Tom's Hardware.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

Coles teams up with Wing to pilot drone deliveries in Australia's capital:

Australian grocery giant Coles is partnering with Wing to offer contactless drone delivery service to customers in the ACT.

Customers will be able to order over 250 grocery items via the Wing app, including bread, fresh produce, snacks, convenience meals, health care items, kitchen essentials, and even toilet paper. There will be no minimum spend or delivery fee.

The pilot will initially be available to some customers based in Crace, Palmerston, Franklin, Harrison, Mitchell, Giralang, and Kaleen. It will operate from 8am to 4.30pm on weekdays and 9am to 4pm on weekends.

On arrival at its destination, the drone will slow down, hover, and descend to a delivery height of about seven metres above ground, lower the package on a tether, and automatically release the package in the desired delivery area.

[...] "Wing made more than 100,000 deliveries in Australia in 2021, and strong demand for drone delivery has continued in 2022. Wing has already made more than 30,000 deliveries in Australia this year."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Low on gas: Ukraine invasion chokes supply of neon needed for chipmaking:

Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens to pile further pressure on chip manufacturing as a squeeze on the supply of rare gasses critical to the production process adds to pandemic-related disruptions.

Ukraine supplies about 50 percent of the world's neon gas, analysts have said, a byproduct of Russia's steel industry that is purified in the former Soviet republic and is indispensable in chip production.

Manufacturers have already been reeling from shortages of components, late deliveries and rising material costs, with companies that rely on chips, such as carmakers, facing production delays as a result.

[...] Many companies, including US manufacturers Applied Materials and Intel, have said constraints would persist into 2023. Demand for raw materials is also expected to rise by more than a third in the next four years, as businesses such as the world's biggest contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company increase production, said consultancy Techcet.

"We are in great trouble. We have no rare gasses to sell," said Tsuneo Date, who runs Daito Medical Gas, a pressurized gas dealer north of Tokyo.

When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, neon prices shot up by at least 600 percent. Companies have said they can tap into reserves but the rush to find suppliers that are not in eastern Europe is causing shortages and price hikes, not only of neon but also other industrial gasses such as xenon and krypton.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

More alcohol, less brain: Association begins with an average of just one drink a day:

The research, using a dataset of more than 36,000 adults, revealed that going from one to two drinks a day was linked with changes in the brain equivalent to aging two years. Heavier drinking was associated with an even greater toll. The science on heavy drinking and the brain is clear: The two don't have a healthy relationship. People who drink heavily have alterations in brain structure and size that are associated with cognitive impairments.

But according to a new study, alcohol consumption even at levels most would consider modest -- a few beers or glasses of wine a week -- may also carry risks to the brain. An analysis of data from more than 36,000 adults, led by a team from the University of Pennsylvania, found that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption was associated with reductions in overall brain volume.

The link grew stronger the greater the level of alcohol consumption, the researchers showed. As an example, in 50-year-olds, as average drinking among individuals increases from one alcohol unit (about half a beer) a day to two units (a pint of beer or a glass of wine) there are associated changes in the brain equivalent to aging two years. Going from two to three alcohol units at the same age was like aging three and a half years. The team reported their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

upstart writes:

Heat May Melt Away White Fat:

Applying heat locally activates beige fat in mice and humans, and could become an approach to tackle obesity, a study published today (March 4) in Cell suggests.

"Overall, they suggest a fascinating and very easy to translate observation, by applying that mild heat you might activate thermogenic adipocytes. But in humans the situation is definitely more complicated," Siegfried Ussar, an obesity researcher at Helmholtz Munich, Germany, who was not involved in the study, tells The Scientist. "It will be interesting to see how that translates to humans, because the nature of the cell types is still controversial plus the impact on the blood flow might be different."

[...] Adipose tissue comes in three colors: white, brown and beige. While white fat specializes in storing lipid and expands during obesity, brown fat is thermogenic, turning energy into heat. Beige fat is the middleman: beige fat cells are located within white fat and are indistinguishable from them, unless they undergo a process called browning. After browning, beige fat burns energy and produces heat. "We want to understand how we can activate beige fat to prevent or treat obesity," Xinran Ma, an endocrinologist at East China Normal University in Shanghai, China, who co-authored the new study, tells The Scientist.

Previous research by other groups had sought to induce browning through various stimuli, including cold treatment and the activation of beta-adrenergic signaling. In the present study, the researchers used a different stimulus: heat, applied just to a region thought to harbor beige fat. The researchers used nanoparticles, which they injected into white fat found around the groin of mice. When exposed to near-infrared light, the nanoparticles heat up the tissue around them to about 41°C. And when the researchers induced this temperature for 10 minutes in mice, they observed increased heat production in the area after 12 hours using thermal imaging—an indication that at least some of the area's beige fat had browned.

The researchers then tested local hyperthermia therapy in humans by applying a heat source of 41°C to fat deposits around the neck and the shoulders, where beige fat is thought to be found in humans. Again, internal heat production in the area increased, and remained elevated for two hours after the external heat source was removed, based on thermal imaging. From that, the authors concluded that local hyperthermia could induce thermogenesis in humans by activating beige adipocytes.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Putin blocks Russians' access to Facebook, Twitter, app stores [Updated]:

Update 2:40pm EST: Russia's Internet censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, confirmed that it would be blocking access to Facebook, accusing the company of violating the law by blocking state media outlets from the platform.

When reached for comment by Ars, a Facebook spokesperson cited a statement from Nick Clegg, president of global affairs, who said, "We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action."

Original article: Russia is reportedly blocking Twitter, Facebook, various news sites, and major app stores, according to a German journalist.

The move comes after the Russian government announced last week that it was partially restricting access to Facebook in retaliation for the company applying fact-checking labels to posts from state-controlled media outlets. Earlier this week, Meta, Facebook's parent company, and YouTube blocked access to Russian state media outlets RT and Sputnik in the European Union.

The news of Russia's blockade came from Mathieu von Rohr, head of the foreign desk at German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. He tweeted that "Twitter, Facebook, BBC, Deutsche Welle, App Stores" were all being blocked. (Deutsche Welle is the German public broadcaster.)

Original Submission

PiMuNu writes:

Their Bionic Eyes are Now Obsolete and Unsupported:

Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. "I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train," Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. "I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little 'beep, beep, beep' sound."

It wasn't her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she'd been able to see with the implant's help vanished.

[...] These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight's implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.

upstart writes:

Elon Musk warns to use Starlink 'with caution' in Ukraine:

Days after sending SpaceX Starlink internet terminals to Ukraine, Elon Musk is warning people there to "please use with caution." As a non-Russian communications system, the Starlink satellite internet service has a "high" probability of being targeted during the ongoing Russian invasion, Musk said.

The SpaceX founder and CEO advised users to only turn on Starlink when needed and to place the antenna as far away from people as possible. He also suggested visibly camouflaging antennas.

[...] Additionally, the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) Director Christopher Scolese recently warned that Russia's military can target satellites to disrupt satellite-based internet traffic, communications, and GPS services. Scolese said that if Russia feels it needs to, they will extend their war into space.

Original Submission