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Fnord666 writes:

Apple is apparently removing applications from its App Store that haven't been updated recently. I personally have several applications published that are simple, free utilities. Like the developer in the article, my applications are complete and have no need to be updated. In fact, in order to update them at this point I would have to buy a new Apple developer license ($99US) in order to publish an update. Fortunately they won't need much, if any, code changes to bring them up to date. It's just irritating that I will need to pay again to keep my apps published.

Devs Are Up in Arms After Apple Says It Will Remove Games That Haven't Been Updated

On Twitter, Protopop Games (below) shared an email from Apple that said their app had not been updated in "a significant amount of time" and would therefore be deleted from the App Store.

The game in question, Motivoto, was completed and therefore last updated three years ago in March 2019, but Apple told Protopop Games that "if no update is submitted within 30 days, the app will be removed from sale."

The complaints center around the fact that all games will eventually cease receiving updates as developers move on, but will plausibly remain functional from that point onwards. Apple's new policy could see swathes of classic games removed simply due to having been released years earlier. We've reached out to Apple for comment on the reasoning behind the new policy.

AnonTechie writes:

Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore — you can always go back and change it. But is time travel really possible in our universe, or is it just science fiction ?

Our modern understanding of time and causality comes from general relativity. Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein's theory combines space and time into a single entity — "spacetime" — and provides a remarkably intricate explanation of how they both work, at a level unmatched by any other established theory. This theory has existed for more than 100 years, and has been experimentally verified to extremely high precision, so physicists are fairly certain it provides an accurate description of the causal structure of our universe.

For decades, physicists have been trying to use general relativity to figure out if time travel is possible. It turns out that you can write down equations that describe time travel and are fully compatible and consistent with relativity. But physics is not mathematics, and equations are meaningless if they do not correspond to anything in reality.

[...] After working on time travel paradoxes for the last three years, I have become increasingly convinced that time travel could be possible, but only if our universe can allow multiple histories to coexist. So, can it ?

[...] Time travel and parallel timelines almost always go hand-in-hand in science fiction, but now we have proof that they must go hand-in-hand in real science as well. General relativity and quantum mechanics tell us that time travel might be possible, but if it is, then multiple histories must also be possible.

The Conversation

Article written by: Barak Shoshany -- Assistant Professor, Physics, Brock University

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

(Apologies in advance for the Facebook link)

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/04/the-first-meta-store-is-opening-in-california-in-may/

On May 9, Meta will double down on its metaverse sales pitch by... making people drive to California to sample its wares at a single physical location.

The uncreatively named Meta Store will showcase every physical product the company sells under its various branded umbrellas, particularly the Meta Quest 2 VR system (formerly Oculus Quest 2). The company's first retail store will be housed in a 1,550-square-foot space on Meta's Burlingame, California, campus, which houses a number of Meta's VR- and AR-specific development efforts, and it will allow the public to test and purchase any of Meta's physical products.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Beams of protons are again circulating around the collider's 27-kilometre ring, marking the end of a multiple-year hiatus for upgrade work

The world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator has restarted after a break of more than three years for maintenance, consolidation and upgrade work. Today, 22 April, at 12:16 CEST, two beams of protons circulated in opposite directions around the Large Hadron Collider's 27-kilometre ring at their injection energy of 450 billion electronvolts (450 GeV).

"These beams circulated at injection energy and contained a relatively small number of protons. High-intensity, high-energy collisions are a couple of months away," says the Head of CERN's Beams department, Rhodri Jones. "But first beams represent the successful restart of the accelerator after all the hard work of the long shutdown."

[...] Pilot beams circulated in the LHC for a brief period in October 2021. However, the beams that circulated today mark not only the end of the second long shutdown for the LHC but also the beginning of preparations for four years of physics-data taking, which is expected to start this summer.

[...] This third run of the LHC, called Run 3, will see the machine's experiments collecting data from collisions not only at a record energy but also in unparalleled numbers.[...]

The unprecedented number of collisions will allow international teams of physicists at CERN and across the world to study the Higgs boson in great detail and put the Standard Model of particle physics and its various extensions to the most stringent tests yet.

Other things to look forward to in Run 3 include the operation of two new experiments, FASER and SND@LHC, designed to look for physics beyond the Standard Model; special proton–helium collisions to measure how often the antimatter counterparts of protons are produced in these collisions; and collisions involving oxygen ions that will improve physicists' knowledge of cosmic-ray physics and the quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter that existed shortly after the Big Bang.

See also: CERN video

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://sliderulemuseum.com/SR_Course.htm

This self-guided course gives numeric examples of the basic calculations that a slide rule can do. Just follow the step-by-step instructions and you will be amazed by the power and versatility of the venerable Slipstick. Click on any of the images below to get a large, unmarked, blowup of each slide rule as shown in the problem.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Hostile Media Perception theory (HMP) is a theory about mass communication that says a partisan perceives bias when presented with neutral coverage of news from a source deemed to be opposite to their political leanings. It also suggests that reading news from a source perceived as politically biased might decrease their willingness to share it with others and vice versa. A paper in Royal Society Open Scientist reports on tests conducted to measure this effect. They took two "hot button" topics, police conduct and COVID-19 restrictions, and presented them to people as a headline and short report. The news items presented were real stories and presented in a neutral manner, but they manipulated the banner graphic on top of the headline to appear that it came from either Fox News or CNN.

Their results showed that perceptions that a news source is biased depends upon both the political leaning of the viewer as well as particular topics being reported:

We show that news reporting on important contemporary and debated issues in US society, such as negative police conduct (Study 1) and compliant or defiant behaviours concerning COVID-19 norms (Study 2), are more likely to be perceived as biased when the news source is not aligned with one's political view. This HMP effect might contribute to further polarization in US society, eroding trust towards media outlets and information providers. However, in line with theory, our evidence indicates that not all news content is relevant in triggering HMP: when respondents are exposed to less controversial news (i.e. positive police conduct, Study 1), perceived news bias is similar across political leanings.

Journal Reference:
Sergio Lo Iacono and Terence Daniel Dores Cruz, Hostile media perception affects news bias, but not news sharing intentions [open], Royal Soc. Open Sci., 9, 2022.
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.211504

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Over a decade old, Honda's little humanoid robot astonishingly doesn't seem obsolete

Honda's ASIMO humanoid robot is retiring. For the last 20 years, ASIMO had been performing at the Honda showroom in Tokyo, Japan, but these regular demonstrations are now at an end. We've known for a while that this was coming—Honda announced back in 2018 that it was halting ASIMO development in favor of working on robots with more practical applications, like robots for elder care and disaster relief. But what blows me away about ASIMO, even now, is just how impressive it still is.

[...] This little robot really did set a (still somewhat aspirational) standard, especially relative to other humanoid robots, which have only within the last few years been able to match and then significantly surpass ASIMO's performance, if not its looks.

[...] But Honda has more recently seemed to realize that they could take the ASIMO platform and the philosophy of humanoid robotics that it represents only so far, and as of 2018 the company shifted development to a clearly ASIMO-inspired but much more robust robot called E2-DR.

The short article has some nice videos of ASIMO:
Performance video from 2010
History of Honda robotics
2017 demo
E2-DR demo

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) claims to have developed a machine learning model that can infer over 30 personality or psychological traits of a person from simply looking at a picture of them. They used deep generative image models to create photorealistic pictures of different faces and combined that with over one million judgements to infer physical traits such as age and happiness, but also personality traits such as trustworthiness, smart, liberal/conservative, Middle-Eastern, gay, and dorky.

One of the authors (Joshua Peterson) announced the paper in a Twitter thread. He noted:

Note that we study attribute *inferences* (impressions), which have no necessary correspondence to the actual identities, attitudes, or competencies of people whom the images resemble or depict. Put another way, our dataset not only contains bias, it deliberately reflects it.

He also pointed out that they can use their model to manipulate images by trait, so one could take a photo and increase its perceived trustworthiness without changing any of the other features, and he invites people to upload their own photos for a demonstration.

I'm sure my fellow Soylentils will agree that this kind of research will never be used out of context nor exploited in any untoward manner (oh, by the way, one of the traits is "electability").

I wonder how this relates to Resting Bitch Face?

Journal Reference:

Joshua C. Peterson, Stefan Uddenberg, Thomas L. Griffiths, Alexander Todorov, and Jordan W. Suchow,Deep models of superficial face judgments [open], PNAS, 119, 117, 2022.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2115228119

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Twitter has just accepted Elon Musk's offer to buy the company.

Twitter accepts buyout, giving Elon Musk total control of the company

On April 25th, Twitter's board of directors accepted Musk's offer of $54.20 per share, or $44 billion, for total control of the company. It was the same price he named in his initial offer on April 14th. Upon completion of the transaction, Twitter will become a private company.

Additional coverage on Reuters, The New York Times, NPR and The Wall Street Journal.

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Wall Street Journal reported Twitter and Mr. Musk had reached an agreement to value Twitter at $44 billion.

The takeover, if it goes through, would mark one of the biggest acquisitions in tech history and will likely have global repercussions for years to come related to how billions of people use social media.

Is this the end for Twitter? Will it become a bastion of unfettered free speech, will it become a dumpster fire (you can bookmark this just in case), or will it be "meet the new boss, same as the old boss"?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Insteon finally comes clean about its sudden smart home shutdown:

Smart home company Insteon and its parent company, Smartlabs Inc., suddenly disappeared last week. In what will probably be remembered as one of the most notorious smart home shutdowns ever, Insteon decided to turn off its cloud servers without giving customers any warning at all, surprise-bricking many smart home devices that relied on the Insteon cloud.

[...] Insteon has finally updated its website (archive here) and pinned a goodbye message to the top of every page a full week after its surprise liquidation. The statement—which is not attributed to anyone—says that the company is going out of business because of the pandemic and supply chain problems. The company looked for a buyer but couldn't find one.

The statement reads, in part:

In 2019, the onset of the global pandemic brought unforeseen disruption to the market, but the company continued to move forward. However, the subsequent (and enduring) disruption to the supply chain caused by the pandemic proved incredibly difficult and the company engaged in a sales process in November, 2021. The goal was to find a parent for the company and continue to invest in new products and the technology. The process resulted in several interested parties, and a sale was expected to be realized in the March timeframe. Unfortunately, that sale did not materialize. Consequently, the company was assigned to a financial services firm in March to optimize the assets of the company.

[...] Insteon ends its statement by saying, "We hope that the Insteon community understands the tireless efforts by all the employees to serve our customers, and [we] deeply apologize to the community."

Previous Story: Insteon Looks Dead—Just Like its Users' Smart Homes

Original Submission

looorg writes:

Since we mentioned that the C64 got middle age (or however you see 40 as) one might also note that the European rival the ZX Spectrum also just turned to (on the 23rd of April). While it might not have been big in America it was fairly popular over in Europe, and certainly then in the UK. More of a rival over here then all this talk about the Apple II etc.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/22/spectrum_at_40/

The ZX Spectrum, released on April 23, 1982, was a follow-up to Sinclair's ZX81. Referred to as the ZX82 or ZX81 Colour during development, the final product arrived with either 16KB or 48KB of RAM (depending on pocket depth) and a case designed by Rick Dickinson, who had previously worked on the ZX81 wedge. Dickinson was also responsible for the ZX Spectrum's infamous rubber keyboard.

The BASIC interpreter was stored in ROM and was written by Steve Vickers on contract from Nine Tiles. A prototype ZX Spectrum, formerly in the possession of Nine Tiles, was donated to the Centre for Computing History in 2019. The prototype lacks the Dickinson case and features full-travel keys, but the guts would go on to form the ZX Spectrum found occupying many a family television of the 1980s.

Text took the form of a 32 x 24 column display and graphics had 256 x 192 pixels to play with. Color was problematic; to conserve memory a separate 32 x 24 overlay of 8 x 8 pixels were used, with each block having a foreground and background color. While static color images could work relatively well, the approach resulted in the infamous attribute clash. Rival machines, such as the Commodore 64, did not suffer from the same problem although used a lower multicolor resolution made for blockier graphics.

The ZX Spectrum, replete with rubber keyboard, debuted at £125 for the 16KB version and £175 for the 48KB incarnation. A 32KB RAM pack could be plugged into the rear expansion slot of the former, and this writer well remembers the joy of an unexpected reset caused by a wobbly bit of hardware.

Over five million of the Z80A-based devices were sold, and its impact cannot be overstated. While over 1.5 million BBC Micros (made by Acorn) may have also been sold during its lifetime, it was the ZX Spectrum that found its way into far more homes across Europe, and its impact continues to resonate in the IT world of today.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Intel Publishes Open-Source PSE Firmware

Last year open-source developers called on Intel to open-source their "PSE" firmware. The Programmable Services Engine (PSE) introduced with Elkhart Lake is an Arm Cortex-M7 companion core responsible for various tasks and is programmed by a binary-only firmware module. While it started out as a proprietary, binary blob, the PSE firmware has now been open-sourced!

[...] The PSE firmware had been closed-source as a frustration to Coreboot developers and other folks concerned about having an open platform as much as possible at the lower-levels for the sake of not only open-source system firmware but also security concerns.

The Intel PSE firmware is being made open-source via GitHub. The Elkhart Lake PSE is open-source under an Apache 2.0 license and is accompanied as well by sample applications and pre-built binaries.

Elkhart Lake is based on the Tremont Atom core.

Also at CNX Software.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Hackers are exploiting 0-days more than ever:

Previously unknown "zero-day" software vulnerabilities are mysterious and intriguing as a concept. But they're even more noteworthy when hackers are spotted actively exploiting the novel software flaws in the wild before anyone else knows about them. As researchers have expanded their focus to detect and study more of this exploitation, they're seeing it more often. Two reports this week from the threat intelligence firm Mandiant and Google's bug hunting team, Project Zero, aim to give insight into the question of exactly how much zero-day exploitation has grown in recent years.

[...] "We started seeing a spike early in 2021, and a lot of the questions I was getting all through the year were, 'What the heck is going on?!'" says Maddie Stone, a security researcher at Project Zero. "My first reaction was, 'Oh my goodness, there's so much.' But when I took a step back and looked at it in the context of previous years, to see such a big jump, that growth actually more likely is due to increased detection, transparency, and public knowledge about zero-days."

[...] While awareness and detection efforts have increased, James Sadowski, a researcher at Mandiant, emphasizes that he does see evidence of a shift in the landscape.

"There are definitely more zero-days being used than ever before," he says. "The overall count last year for 2021 shot up, and there are probably a couple of factors that contributed, including the industry's ability to detect this. But there's also been a proliferation of these capabilities since 2012," the year that Mandiant's report looks back to. "There's been a significant expansion in volume as well as the variety of groups exploiting zero-days," he says.

upstart writes:

Countries that allow economic inequality to increase as they grow richer make their citizens less happy, new research shows:

In most of 78 countries studied people were less satisfied with their lives as their country became less economically equal.

The fall in life satisfaction occurred even where the economy had grown as a whole and people from all classes were generally richer, Dr. David Bartram will tell the British Sociological Association's online annual conference on Thursday 21 April,

[...] He found that life satisfaction in the U.K. in 2018 was similar to that in 1981, during a major recession, in part because inequality in the U.K. had increased so much. The U.K. was typical of countries that had lower life satisfaction over time as inequality had risen, falling from 7.7 in 1981 to 7.4 in 1999 as inequality rose, later recovering to 7.8 as inequality fell.

[...] "When inequality increases, people with high incomes don't benefit much from their gains—many rich people are focused on those who have even more than they do, and they never feel they have enough. But people who earn little really suffer from falling further behind—they feel excluded and frustrated by not being able to keep up even with people who receive average incomes."

[...] Countries where inequality had fallen were generally happier over time, including Poland, Peru, Mexico and pre-war Ukraine.

Dr. Bartram said his research contradicted some previous work that found that higher inequality could increase life satisfaction. "My paper finds the opposite—higher inequality depresses life satisfaction. Previous researchers have compared across different countries at one point in time, but comparing one country to another isn't a good way of learning what will happen as inequality increases."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Brave introduces feature to bypass 'harmful' Google AMP pages:

Chromium-based browser maker Brave has introduced a new feature called De-AMP which allows users to bypass Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages framework (AMP) to allow them to instead visit websites directly.

Brave was scathing in its assessment of Google's AMP framework, claiming in a blog post released on Tuesday that the framework is "harmful to privacy" and "helps Google further monopolize and control the direction of the web".

"An ethical web must be a user-first web, where users are in control of their browsing, and are aware of who they are communicating with. AMP (along with Google's upcoming, actual name still to come, 'AMP 2.0') is incompatible with a user-first Web. De-AMP adds to the long list of Brave features that put users first on the Web," Brave said in the post.

"Where possible, De-AMP will rewrite links and URLs to prevent users from visiting AMP pages altogether. And in cases where that is not possible, Brave will watch as pages are being fetched and redirect users away from AMP pages before the page is even rendered, preventing AMP/Google code from being loaded and executed."

Brave announced that the De-AMP feature is now available in its Nightly and Beta versions and will soon be enabled in the upcoming 1.38 Desktop and Android versions before being released on iOS.

Google claims on its website that the purpose of AMP is to enhance website performance in order to create "user-first experiences".

Also reported at Brave is bypassing Google AMP pages because they're 'harmful to users':

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2