SoylentNews

upstart writes:

The Founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the popular Linux Distribution Ubuntu, indicated on Thursday that the company will probably have its IPO sometime in 2023:

According to Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical, the commercial entity behind Ubuntu, is ready to start planning for its initial public offering, an event that can be expected to happen sometime next year.

[...] In addition to an IPO that might be in the works, it appears that the company is at least approaching profitability. According to Frederic Lardinois at TechCrunch, Shuttleworth said on Thursday during a press briefing focused on last week's release of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, that Canonical's revenues last year were $175 million, and that the biggest issue the company is facing is that it can't meet customer demand, mainly due to a shortage of tech talent.

[...] According to Lardinois, Shuttleworth also made it clear that any IPO would not be driven by any need to raise funds to meet obligations.

It's been obvious to folks watching Canonical that for some time the company's focus hasn't been on Ubuntu's desktop operating system but on its server OS. This shift began in earnest in 2017, which is when it decided that Ubuntu Touch, the mobile OS it'd been developing, was a no starter and announced its demise as a Canonical project, along with Unity, its homegrown desktop environment which was replaced with Gnome.

By that time, Ubuntu Server was becoming popular and had already become the most used Linux distribution on Amazon Web Services. Since then, not only has the company found success monetizing its server business through security subscriptions and such, but has become a major player in the Kubernetes- and container-focused cloud native arena.

Original Submission

Rodxit writes:

Nasa has invented Duranium!
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Duranium

NASA's New Material Built to Withstand Extreme Conditions

NASA innovators recently developed a new metal alloy using a 3D printing process that dramatically improves the strength and durability of the components and parts used in aviation and space exploration, resulting in better and longer-lasting performance.

NASA Alloy GRX-810, an oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) alloy, can endure temperatures over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, is more malleable, and can survive more than 1,000 times longer than existing state-of-the-art alloys. These new alloys can be used to build aerospace parts for high temperature applications, like those inside aircraft and rocket engines, because ODS alloys can withstand harsher conditions before reaching their breaking point.

[...] . NASA's new alloys deliver enhanced mechanical properties at extreme temperatures. At 2,000° F, GRX-810 shows remarkable performance improvements over current state-of-the-art alloys including:

• Twice the strength to resist fracturing
• Three and a half times the flexibility to stretch/bend prior to fracturing
• More than 1,000 times the durability under stress at high temperatures

"This breakthrough is revolutionary for materials development. New types of stronger and more lightweight materials play a key role as NASA aims to change the future of flight," said Hopkins. "Previously, an increase in tensile strength usually lowered a material's ability to stretch and bend before breaking, which is why our new alloy is remarkable."

I guess Elon has to build a Raptor 3 with it.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Dell defends its controversial new laptop memory

If you were triggered over word that Dell is pushing a proprietary memory standard, take a chill pill. Dell's new memory design isn't really proprietary and may actually lead to benefits for performance laptops.

The controversy kicked up last week when images of Dell's new CAMM, or Compression Attached Memory Module, leaked out. This immediately lead tech sites to declare that Dell was taking a path to "lock out user upgrades" and warning laptop users who like to upgrade their memory that they were "out of luck."

In an interview with PCWorld, however, both the person who designed and patented the CAMM standard, as well as the product manager of the first Dell Precision laptop to feature it, assured us the intent of the new memory module standard is to head-off looming bandwidth ceilings in the current SO-DIMM designs. Dell's CAMM, in fact, could increase performance, improve reliability, aid user upgrades, and eventually lower costs too, they said.

[...] [Dell's Tom] Schnell said that Dell isn't making the modules and has worked with memory companies as well as Intel on this. In the future, a person with a CAMM-equipped laptop will be able to buy RAM from any third party and install it in the laptop. Yes, initially, Dell will likely be the only place to get CAMM upgrades, but that should change as the standard scales up and is adopted by other PC makers. The new memory modules are also built using commodity DRAMs just like conventional SO-DIMMs.

[...] So why do we need CAMM anyway? Dell's Schnell said that SO-DIMM, or Small Outline Dual Inline Memory Module, is headed for a glass ceiling within a generation of design. SO-DIMMs, which were first introduced almost 25 years ago, haven't changed much in all that time besides moving to newer and faster DRAM methods.

See also: Dell Launches Its Precision 2022 Laptop Lineup: Feature Intel Alder Lake-HX 16 Core CPUs, Up To 128 GB DDR5 CAMM Memory, Up To RTX 3080 TI GPUs

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Pathogens can hitch a ride on plastic to reach the sea:

Microplastics are a pathway for pathogens on land to reach the ocean, with likely consequences for human and wildlife health, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

[...] The pathogens studied—Toxoplasma gondii, Cryptosporidium (Crypto) and Giardia—can infect both humans and animals. They are recognized by the World Health Organization as underestimated causes of illness from shellfish consumption and are found throughout the ocean.

"It's easy for people to dismiss plastic problems as something that doesn't matter for them, like, 'I'm not a turtle in the ocean; I won't choke on this thing,'" said corresponding author Karen Shapiro, an infectious disease expert and associate professor in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "But once you start talking about disease and health, there's more power to implement change. Microplastics can actually move germs around, and these germs end up in our water and our food."

[...] T. gondii, a parasite found only in cat poop, has infected many ocean species with the disease toxoplasmosis. UC Davis and its partners have a long history of research connecting the parasite to sea otter deaths. It's also killed critically endangered wildlife, including Hector's dolphins and Hawaiian monk seals. In people, toxoplasmosis can cause life-long illnesses, as well as developmental and reproductive disorders.

Crypto and giardia cause gastrointestinal disease and can be deadly in young children and people who are immunocompromised.

"This is very much a problem that affects both humans and animals," said first author Emma Zhang, a fourth-year veterinary student with the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "It highlights the importance of a One Health approach that requires collaboration across human, wildlife and environmental disciplines. We all depend on the ocean environment."

More information: Association of zoonotic protozoan parasites with microplastics in seawater and implications for human and wildlife health, Scientific Reports (2022).
Journal information:Scientific Reports Provided by UC Davis.
Citation : Pathogens can hitch a ride on plastic to reach the sea (2022, April 26) from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-pathogens-hitch-plastic-sea.html

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Google accused of 'creepy' speech policing:

Google has been criticised for an "inclusive language" feature that will recommend word substitutions for people writing in Google Docs.

The tool will offer guidance to people writing in a way that "may not be inclusive to all readers" in a similar manner to spelling and grammar check systems.

Although the suggestions are just suggestions - they aren't forced on writers and the tool may be turned off - critics have described it as "speech-policing" and "profoundly clumsy, creepy and wrong".

The new feature is officially called assistive writing and will be on by default for enterprise users, business customers who might want to nudge particular writing styles among their staff.

The language the system favours reflects decades of campaigning for gender-neutral terms ("crewed" instead of "manned") and against phrases that reflect racial prejudice ("deny list" instead of "blacklist"), as well as more modern concerns about the impact of our vocabulary on how we identify people.

Also reported at:

• The Telegraph [May be paywalled in your locality]
• TechRadar
• Metro.co.uk
• WSJ
• Vice
• NY Post
• The Register

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

NRO plans for immediate and long-term acquisition of commercial satellite data - SpaceNews:

Since Russian forces began mobilizing to invade Ukraine, commercial satellite operators have supplied U.S. intelligence agencies with extensive electro-optical, synthetic aperture radar and radio frequency data.

BlackSky, Maxar Technologies and Planet, for example, have shared "millions and millions of square kilometers of imagery" over Ukraine and Russia, specifically, Peter Muend, director of the National Reconnaissance Office Commercial Systems Program Office, said April 25 at the GEOINT Symposium.

Muend also cited Capella Space for providing extensive SAR data and HawkEye 360 for supplying RF data to U.S. government agencies. Those agencies, in turn, are sharing imagery and data with U.S. partners and allies.

Commercial satellite imagery and data have been featured prominently in news reports and social media posts since the Russia invaded Ukraine.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The European Parliament has approved the Digital Services Act (DSA), a piece of legislation that sets out new rules for how internet companies should keep European users safe from online disinformation and illegal content, goods and services.

Under the DSA, the practice of targeting users online based on their religion, gender or sexual preferences will be banned, as will so-called dark patterns, deceptive web design aimed at encouraging people to unwillingly click on online content.

Large online platforms will also be forced to disclose what steps they are taking to tackle misinformation or propaganda, while victims of cyber violence and the non-consensual sharing of illegal content will be better protected with immediate takedowns.

[...] Companies that fail to comply will face fines of up to 6% of global turnover.

[...] For companies found to be in violation of those rules, the UK’s communications regulator Ofcom will have the power to block their services in the UK or issue fines of up to £18 million (US$23.7 million), or 10% of annual turnover.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Innovative Brain-Wide Mapping Reveals a Single Memory Is Stored Across Many Connected Brain Regions:

A new study from 's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory provides the most extensive and rigorous evidence yet that the mammalian brain retains a single memory across a broadly distributed, functionally integrated complex spanning many brain regions, rather than in just one or a few spots.

Memory research pioneer Richard Semon had predicted such a "unified engram complex" more than a century ago, but achieving the new study's confirmation of his hypothesis required the application of multiple newly developed technologies. The researchers found and ranked dozens of previously unknown memory-related areas in the study, demonstrating that memory recall becomes more behaviorally powerful when multiple memory-storing regions are reactivated rather than just one.

"When talking about memory storage we all usually talk about the hippocampus or the cortex," said co-lead and co-corresponding author Dheeraj Roy. He began the research while a graduate student in the RIKEN-MIT Laboratory for Neural Circuit Genetics at The Picower Institute led by senior author Susumu Tonegawa, Picower Professor in the Departments of Biology and Brain and Cognitive Sciences. "This study reflects the most comprehensive description of memory encoding cells, or memory 'engrams,' distributed across the brain, not just in the well-known memory regions. It basically provides the first rank-ordered list for high-probability engram regions. This list should lead to many future studies, which we are excited about, both in our labs and by other groups."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The test version of a unique satellite navigation receiver has been delivered for integration testing on the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft. The NaviMoon satnav receiver is designed to perform the farthest ever positioning fix from Earth, using signals millions of times fainter than those used by our cellphones or automobiles.

“This engineering model of our NaviMoon receiver is the very first piece of hardware to be produced in the context of ESA’s Moonlight initiative, to develop dedicated telecommunications and navigation services for the Moon,” explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, Head of ESA’s Navigation Science Office and managing all ESA lunar navigation activities.

“It will be flown aboard the Lunar Pathfinder mission into orbit around the Moon, from where it will perform the furthest satellite navigation positioning fix ever made, at more than 400,000 km away to an accuracy of less than 100 m. This represents an extraordinary engineering challenge, because at such a distance the faint Galileo and GPS signals it makes use of will be barely distinguishable from background noise. This demonstration will imply a true change of paradigm for lunar orbiting navigation.”

[...] The washing-machine-sized Lunar Pathfinder is being built as a commercial mission by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, SSTL, in the UK. ESA is funding guest payloads for it including the 1.4 kg NaviMoon receiver that will be accommodated beside the spacecraft’s main X-band transmitter that links it with Earth.

[...] “In principle this could mean that future missions could navigate themselves to the Moon autonomously using satellite navigation signals alone with no help from the ground.”

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