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upstart writes:

Meta announces plans to monetize the Metaverse, and creators are not happy:

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, announced some initial plans on Wednesday to allow content creators to monetize in its would-be Metaverse platform, Horizon Worlds. Meta's planned revenue share for contributors' creations could add up to nearly 50 percent.

[...] First off, Horizon Worlds will support in-world purchases. A handful of creators will be able to sell virtual items from within user-generated areas. Meta also plans to introduce a creator bonus program that awards money to creators based on how much other users engage with their content.

[...] When users purchase an item in Horizon Worlds, Meta confirmed to CNBC that it would take a 25 percent cut—but that's after any amount a hardware platform might take. Right now that just means Meta's Oculus store, which takes a 30 percent cut. So content creators will have to hand over 30 percent to the Oculus store (or the applicable percentage for whatever platform stores Horizon Worlds ends up on later, like Google Play), then they'll have to cede 25 percent of what's left to Horizon Worlds.

That leaves creators with just over half of their content's revenue before any applicable taxes.

The announcement has drawn ire from creators in the loosely related NFT community, who are accustomed to single-digit percentage platform takes. There are also accusations of hypocrisy from game developers and others who have seen Meta publicly criticize companies like Apple for charging 30 percent on similar transactions around in-game content.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D Review: 3D V-Cache Powers a New Gaming Champion

On average at 1080p, the 5800X3D is ~9% faster than the 12900K, which costs 30% more, and ~7% faster than the Core i9-12900KS, which costs a whopping 64% more. That means the Ryzen 7 58000X3D is now both the fastest gaming chip in our test suite and a better value for gaming specifically than the Core i9 models.

Overclocking either of Intel's Core i9 models requires a beefy cooler and robust motherboard. However, despite its much tamer overall power requirements, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is still ~3% faster than the overclocked 12900K in our cumulative measurement.

[...] AMD's marketing claim is that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is, on average, 15% faster than the Ryzen 9 5900X. The 3D V-Cache doesn't improve performance in all games, so this will vary, but we recorded a 21% increase over the 5900X at 1080p in our test suite, which is incredibly impressive.

The 5800X3D and the 5800X are built from the same basic design, but the X3D model has a 200 MHz lower boost and 400 MHz lower base clock than the 5800X. Despite that limitation, we recorded a massive 28% gain over the 5800X at 1080p, which is impressive. However, overclocking the 5800X3D's [DDR4] memory yielded an average performance increase of only about 1%, which isn't too meaningful.

[...] These results clearly show that the Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a chip designed specifically for gaming, not for leading-edge performance in application workloads. We've highlighted the 5800X3D beating the 12900K in gaming, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that the 12900K is 29% faster in single-threaded work and 62% faster in threaded applications. That chasm grows even larger with the Core i9-12900KS.

AnonTechie writes:

Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock. But developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously. How can that be, and what would it mean? It'll take a little while to explain, but don't worry: even if time doesn't exist, our lives will go on as usual.

upstart writes:

US warns of govt hackers targeting industrial control systems:

A joint cybersecurity advisory issued by CISA, NSA, FBI, and the Department of Energy (DOE) warns of government-backed hacking groups being able to hijack multiple industrial devices using a new ICS-focused malware toolkit.

The federal agencies said the threat actors could use custom-built modular malware to scan for, compromise, and take control of industrial control system (ICS) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices.

"The APT actors' tools have a modular architecture and enable cyber actors to conduct highly automated exploits against targeted devices. Modules interact with targeted devices, enabling operations by lower-skilled cyber actors to emulate higher-skilled actor capabilities," the joint advisory reads.

"The APT actors can leverage the modules to scan for targeted devices, conduct reconnaissance on device details, upload malicious configuration/code to the targeted device, back up or restore device contents, and modify device parameters."

ICS/SCADA devices at risk of being compromised and hijacked include:

• Schneider Electric MODICON and MODICON Nano programmable logic controllers (PLCs)
• Omron Sysmac NJ and NX PLCs, and
• Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers

DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI also found that state-sponsored hackers also have malware that leverages CVE-2020-15368 exploits to target Windows systems with ASRock motherboards to execute malicious code and move laterally to and disrupt IT or OT environments.

upstart writes:

Google to invest $9.5B in US offices and data centers this year:

Google plans to invest $9.5 billion in US offices and data centers this year, the company said Wednesday. That's an increase from $7 billion spent on real estate in 2021.

The planned spending comes as the company begins to roll out its hybrid work strategy, which will allow many employees to work remotely part of the week.

"It might seem counterintuitive to step up our investment in physical offices even as we embrace more flexibility in how we work," said Sundar Pichai, Google and Alphabet CEO, in a blog post. "Yet we believe it's more important than ever to invest in our campuses and that doing so will make for better products, a greater quality of life for our employees, and stronger communities."

Google highlighted investments in offices across the country, including the opening of new premises in Atlanta and ongoing construction of an office in Austin, with work also under way on existing offices in New York, as well as campuses in Boulder, CO., Cambridge, MA., Pittsburgh, and Seattle. The company also expects to create 12,000 additional jobs this year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Titanosaur nesting spot found in Brazil:

They were the largest land creatures the Earth has ever known. But what survived millions of years of fossilization in one specific area of the Ponte Alta region of Brazil was not their massive bones, rather, it was their rare and relatively tiny eggs. And many of them! The first titanosaur nesting site in the country was recently announced in a paper published in Scientific Reports.

Sauropods, a group of long-necked herbivores, were a diverse type of dinosaur that lived from the Jurassic era through the Cretaceous, a period spanning from 201 million years to 66 million years ago. Titanosaurs were a clade of sauropod—a group with a common ancestor—that was the last of this lineage to exist on this planet in the Late Cretaceous. While their name justifiably implies an enormous size, not all of them were huge.

South America is well-known for its titanosaur fossils, particularly in Argentina, home to some of the world's most spectacular titanosaur nesting sites and embryonic remains. Titanosaur eggshells and egg fragments are known in Uruguay, Peru, and Brazil, but a fossilized egg here and there doesn't provide evidence of a nesting site. Several egg clutches, numerous eggs and egg fragments in more than one layer of sediment, does.

The discovery marks the northernmost titanosaur nesting site in South America. While we knew the dinosaurs ranged farther north, the lack of known nesting sites there suggested they might have migrated south for egg-laying. The discovery indicates that this wasn't necessarily the case.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

James Webb telescope's coldest instrument reaches operating temperature:

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will see the first galaxies to form after the Big Bang, but to do that, its instruments first need to get cold—really cold. On April 7, Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)—a joint development by NASA and ESA (European Space Agency)—reached its final operating temperature below 7 kelvin (minus 447 degrees Fahrenheit, or minus 266 degrees Celsius).

Along with Webb's three other instruments, MIRI initially cooled off in the shade of Webb's tennis-court-size sunshield, dropping to about 90 kelvin (minus 298 F, or minus 183 C). But dropping to less than 7 kelvin required an electrically powered cryocooler. Last week, the team passed a particularly challenging milestone called the "pinch point," when the instrument goes from 15 kelvin (minus 433 F, or minus 258 C) to 6.4 kelvin (minus 448 F, or minus 267 C).

"The MIRI cooler team has poured a lot of hard work into developing the procedure for the pinch point," said Analyn Schneider, project manager for MIRI at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "The team was both excited and nervous going into the critical activity. In the end it was a textbook execution of the procedure, and the cooler performance is even better than expected."

The low temperature is necessary because all four of Webb's instruments detect infrared light—wavelengths slightly longer than those that human eyes can see. Distant galaxies, stars hidden in cocoons of dust, and planets outside our solar system all emit infrared light. But so do other warm objects, including Webb's own electronics and optics hardware. Cooling down the four instruments' detectors and the surrounding hardware suppresses those infrared emissions. MIRI detects longer infrared wavelengths than the other three instruments, which means it needs to be even colder.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Physicists in the United States have just announced a major breakthrough after they literally put a new spin on one of the greatest inventions in history: the transistor. The scientists made an entirely novel switching device called a magneto-electric transistor that uses 5% less energy than conventional semiconductor transistors, while potentially reducing the number of transistors needed to store data by as much as 75%.

[...] It was by looking at these demand problems and the physical constraints of the conventional transistor that Dowben and colleagues reckoned that they had to come up with something that works fundamentally differently. Eventually, they figured out how to make an electric-magnetic transistor.

Here’s how it works. Instead of leveraging the switching of the flow of electrons through a circuit, the electric-magnetic transistor uses a fundamental property of electrons called spin, which can point either up or down. The orientation of a particle’s spin can be manipulated using, you’ve guessed it, magnetism.

ZME Science

[Journal Reference]: Advanced Materials
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.202105023

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Wikipedia community votes to stop accepting cryptocurrency donations:

More than 200 long-time Wikipedia editors have requested that the Wikimedia Foundation stop accepting cryptocurrency donations. The foundation received crypto donations worth about $130,000 in the most recent fiscal year—less than 0.1 percent of the foundation's revenue, which topped $150 million last year.

Debate on the proposal has raged over the last three months.

"Cryptocurrencies are extremely risky investments that have only been gaining popularity among retail investors," wrote Wikipedia user GorillaWarfare, the original author of the proposal, back in January. "I do not think we should be endorsing their use in this way."

GorillaWarfare is Molly White, a Wikipedian who has become something of an anti-cryptocurrency activist. She also runs the Twitter account "web3 is going just great," which highlights "some of the many disasters happening in crypto, defi, NFTs, and other web3 projects," the account profile says.

In her proposal for the Wikimedia Foundation, GorillaWarfare added that "Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two most highly used cryptocurrencies, and are both proof-of-work, using an enormous amount of energy."

[...] Bitcoin defenders countered that bitcoin's energy usage is driven by its mining process, which consumes about the same amount of energy regardless of the number of transactions. So accepting any given bitcoin donation won't necessarily lead to more carbon emissions.

But cryptocurrency critics argued that Wikimedia's de facto endorsement of cryptocurrencies may help to push up their price. And the more expensive bitcoin is, the more energy miners will devote to creating new ones.

[...] Ultimately, 232 long-time editors of Wikipedia voiced support for ending cryptocurrency donations, while 94 opposed the move.

ElizabethGreene writes:

From Becky Ferreira at Vice:

Scientists believe they have identified the oldest fossils on Earth, dating back at least 3.75 billion years and possibly even 4.2 billion years, in rocks found at a remote location in northern Québec, Canada, according to a new study.

If the structures in these rocks are biological in origin, it would push the timeline of life on our planet back by 300 million years at a minimum, and could potentially show that the earliest known organisms are barely younger than Earth itself.

These presumed microbial fossils were originally collected by Dominic Papineau, an associate professor in geochemistry and astrobiology at University College London, during a 2008 expedition to Québec's Nuvvuagittuq Supracrustal Belt, a formation that contains some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Papineau and his colleagues reported their discovery in a 2017 paper published in Nature, which sparked a debate over whether the tubes and filaments preserved in the rocks were a result of biological or geological processes.

[...] In the wake of skepticism about the claims of their 2017 study, Papineau and his colleagues employed a host of new techniques to clarify the nature of the mysterious structures in the Canadian rock.

[...] "We don't have any DNA, of course, that survived these geological timescales, with the heat and pressure that the rock has suffered," Papineau said. "But what we can say, on the basis of morphology, is that these microfossils resemble those that are made by the modern microbacterium called Mariprofundus ferrooxydans."

Journal Reference:
Dominic Papineau, Zhenbing She, Matthew S. Dodd, et al., Metabolically diverse primordial microbial communities in Earth's oldest seafloor-hydrothermal jasper [open], Sci. Adv., 8, 15, 2022.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm2296

Previously: Oldest Evidence of Life on Earth Found in 3.77-4.28 Billion Year Old Fossils

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Images of Zelenskyy show the physical toll that trauma and stress can have on the body:

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy toured the devastation in Bucha this month — where bodies of civilians lay in the street and buildings were destroyed — his haunted face seemed to show the toll of Russia's war in Ukraine.

The 44-year-old's normally shaved face was bearded and lined, his forehead scrunched in distress and his eyes with heavy bags underneath.

They are the hallmark physical signs that can appear on anyone who is going through intense trauma and stress — particularly in wartime, according to Glenn Patrick Doyle, a psychologist who specializes in trauma.

[...] "The thing to understand about trauma and the body is that stress responses kind of hijack every otherwise 'normal' function of our body," he says. "The bodily processes that keep us focused and regulated on a normal day get kind of suspended for the duration of the stressor and replaced with processes designed to help us just get through the stressful experience."

[...] Much has been written about the way U.S. presidents seem to age while in office. Often, images from the time they entered office and those from their final days at the White House are compared. The presidents often display more lines, much more gray hair or heavier bags under the eyes than they did on their first days in the White House.

[...] When we experience physical or emotional stress, the human body produces cortisol, the primary stress hormone. It contributes to the physical changes of the body under long-term stress, Dr. Nicole Colgrove, a specialist in otolaryngology at Virginia Hospital Center, told NPR.

Cortisol accelerates the loss of elasticity in skin, leading to a sagging or sunken appearance, she says. It also contributes to hair turning gray or white under intense stress.

Just Say No To 666 writes:

Patrick Paumen causes a stir whenever he pays for something in a shop or restaurant. This is because the 37-year-old doesn't need to use a bank card or his mobile phone to pay. Instead, he simply places his left hand near the contactless card reader, and the payment goes through.

[...] He is able to pay using his hand because back in 2019 he had a contactless payment microchip injected under his skin.

[...] And when it comes to implantable payment chips, British-Polish firm, Walletmor, says that last year it became the first company to offer them for sale.

[...] The technology Walletmor uses is near-field communication or NFC, the contactless payment system in smartphones. Other payment implants are based on radio-frequency identification (RFID), which is the similar technology typically found in physical contactless debit and credit cards.

"Chip implants contain the same kind of technology that people use on a daily basis," he says, "From key fobs to unlock doors, public transit cards like the London Oyster card, or bank cards with contactless payment function.

"The reading distance is limited by the small antenna coil inside the implant. The implant needs to be within the electromagnetic field of a compatible RFID [or NFC] reader. Only when there is a magnetic coupling between the reader and the transponder can the implant can be read."

[...] Yet the issue with such chips, (and what causes concern), is whether in the future they become ever more advanced, and packed full of a person's private data. And, in turn, whether this information is secure, and if a person could indeed be tracked.

Financial technology expert Theodora Lau asks "How much are we willing to pay, for the sake of convenience?" she says. "Where do we draw the line when it comes to privacy and security? Who will be protecting the critical infrastructure, and the humans that are part of it?"

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Vivo announces its first folding phone:

Vivo has announced the X Fold, its first folding phone. The X Fold takes a similar approach to Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold series and its competitors, with a large 8.03-inch folding screen on the inside for tablet-style use and a more conventional phone-sized screen — in this case, 6.53 inches — on the outside.

[...] Beyond its folding capabilities, the Vivo X Fold sports recognizably flagship specs. It's powered by Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and has a 4,600mAh battery that can be charged at 50W wirelessly or at 66W using a cable. Both its screens support up to a 120Hz refresh rate and have ultrasonic fingerprint scanners built into them.

What are your thoughts on folding phones? Will the extra screen space be useful, are they an opportunity for planned obsolescence or will it just be another fad?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

From CODA to Hawkeye, the surge of sign languages on screen is a sign of better things to come for the Deaf community:

When Troy Kotsur was awarded Best Supporting Actor at the recent Academy Awards, he dedicated his win to the Deaf community. CODA went on to win Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, making it a major step forward for the Academy's recognition of marginalized storytelling.

CODA, an acronym for Child Of Deaf Adults, follows the story of teenager Ruby Rossi. She dreams of being a singer, but is trapped by her Deaf family's dependence on her as their interpreter. Torn between her familial burdens and her longing to fit into hearing culture, Ruby struggles to convince her family to support her own goals.

[...] What makes CODA groundbreaking as a film for deaf people is not the narrative itself, but the accessibility. CODA is one of the first major features where the captions are "burned in" or hard-coded on every screen.

[...] Recently there have been more calls for open-captioned cinema sessions, where subtitles appear at the bottom of the big screen, but these are still few and far between. Hearing audiences are growing more accustomed to reading captions: as Bong Joon-Ho said of his own Best Picture winner Parasite: "Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films."

Captions are perfectly normal outside the English-speaking world, where most cinemas will show Hollywood movies with captions. The booming popularity of streaming services has normalized captions on our TV screens, especially as we gain easy access to more international productions. Even the quality of transcription and translation has fallen under scrutiny, as we saw with the different caption track options in Squid Game.

No matter how well Deaf people are represented on the screen, a lack of captioning creates an unequal language barrier for deaf viewers. Until the films and shows themselves are accessible, storytelling continues to favor and center hearing people's experience.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dead Sunspot Explosion Spits Plasma Toward Earth:

The Sun just hurled debris from a dead sunspot toward Earth, and the superheated material is supposed to arrive at our planet on Thursday (don't worry—you won't feel it).

On Monday, an old and dying sunspot dubbed AR2987 exploded, sending a mass ejection of material from the Sun into space, Space Weather reported. That material may cause a geomagnetic storm when it reaches Earth.

[...] The CME¹ is expected to reach Earth on April 14, according to predictions made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The impact with Earth's atmosphere could trigger a G-2 geomagnetic storm. Storms are rated from G-1 to G-5, so a G-2 level storm is considered fairly moderate. The geomagnetic storm could potentially cause some minor disruptions to power grids or orbiting satellites, in addition to auroras that may be visible at lower latitudes than usual.

¹Coronal Mass Ejection

Original Submission