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upstart writes:

Judge brings dismissed Steam antitrust lawsuit back from the dead:

Last November, Western District of Washington Judge John Coughenour sided with Valve in dismissing a Steam antitrust lawsuit that had been filed by indie developer (and Humble Bundle creator) Wolfire Games. Now, that same judge is showing new respect for Wolfire's arguments, allowing parts of an amended version of the complaint to move forward.

In a May 6 ruling (noted by Bloomberg Law), Judge Coughenour said that the allegations in Wolfire's initial lawsuit were "anecdotal and threadbare" but that an amended lawsuit "provides additional context" and lays out a case that is "sufficient to plausibly allege unlawful conduct." As such, the judge has refused to dismiss large parts of that amended case, letting it move forward through the long judicial process.

In his original ruling, Judge Coughenour dismissed Wolfire's claims that Steam's 30 percent fee to publishers was higher than what the company would take in a more competitive market. At the time, the judge noted that Steam's fees had remained the same from its launch in 2003 through its alleged "market dominance" in 2013 and beyond.

In his new ruling, though, Judge Coughenour was receptive to the argument that Steam's fees relative to the competition have changed during that time, writing, "In those early days, Defendant was competing against brick-and-mortar game distributors, [but] the [amended complaint] makes it clear that Defendant did not need market power to charge a fee well above its cost structure because those brick-and-mortar competitors had a far higher cost structure."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

MakerBot and Ultimaker announce plans to merge – TechCrunch:

Desktop 3D printing firms MakerBot and Ultimaker this morning announced plans to merge. The new single company will be backed by NPM Capital and MakerBot-owner Stratasys and co-led by existing CEOs Nadav Goshen and Jürgen von Hollen. Existing offices will also be maintained in both Brooklyn and The Netherlands.

Both firms rode an initial wave of excitement around additive manufacturing 10 to 15 years ago, becoming two of the most prominent players in the desktop 3D printing space. MakerBot was founded in 2008 as an offshoot of the open source RepRap project. In 2013, the company was acquired by industrial 3D printing giant Stratasys. Founded in Utrecht, Netherlands in 2011, Ultimaker's team was similarly formed around attempts to productize the RepRap project.

[...] The newly formed company will spin out from Stratasys, though the parent company will maintain a minority (45.6%) stake. NPM Capital will control the other 54.4%.

[...] Pending regulator approvals, the deal is expected to close in Q2 or Q3.

Are any of our community 3D printer users? What are you experiences? Has it lived up to your expectations? And the question that I'm sure everyone has asked - what have you made?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Crypto crash: almost $1 trillion wiped off markets as Bitcoin hits lowest level since 2020:

It's been a nightmare week for cryptocurrency holders as the market crashes and Bitcoin hits its lowest price since December 2020. Ethereum, BNB, XRP, and many other digital coins have also fallen to their lowest levels in a long time. The crisis came after stablecoin Terra, designed to trade 1:1 with the US dollar, collapsed.

TerraUSD (UST), the 11th largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is an algorithmic stablecoin that uses a set of smart contracts to ensure its value stays as close to $1 as possible. But after hovering at around $1 for about a year, it crashed to 29 cents yesterday, plunging its market cap from more than $45 billion to less than $5 billion. It has since rallied to 62 cents, but that's still far from $1.

Terra's support coin, Luna, has also plummeted in dramatic style, going from $86 at the start of the week to its current price of 20 cents. Terra is designed so traders can exchange 1 UST for $1 worth of Luna, no matter the price of UST

[...] Do Kwon, co-founder of Terra developer Terraform Labs, tweeted: "I understand the last 72 hours have been extremely tough on all of you - know that I am resolved to work with every one of you to weather this crisis, and we will build our way out of this."

Terra's collapse has impacted many cryptocurrencies, the most notable being the biggest one of all: Bitcoin. At the time of writing, BTC is at $27,236, its lowest value since before the crypto boom at the end of 2020. Bitcoin has now lost nearly two-thirds of its value since peaking at $69,000 in November 2021.

[...] The good news for non-crypto-owning gamers is that the freefall will doubtlessly make mining less profitable, and should push graphics card prices even closer to MSRP.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

1,600-Feet Asteroid, Bigger Than Most Buildings, Heading Towards Earth:

Space scientists have warned that a huge asteroid is heading towards the Earth. According to American space agency NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), which is monitoring it, the giant space rock Asteroid 388945 (2008 TZ3) will make close approach to our planet at 2.48am on May 16.

NASA further said that the asteroid is 1,608 feet wide. In comparison, New York's iconic Empire State building stands at 1,454 feet. It is also bigger than the Eiffel Tower and dwarf the Statue of Liberty too.

The space rock can cause huge damage if it hits the Earth. But space scientists' calculations say it will pass us from a distance of about 2.5 million miles away.

Though it may sound a huge distance, in space terms it is not. And that is why, NASA has flagged this as "close approach".

This is not the first time that Asteroid 388945 has paid us a visit. It passed very close to Earth in May 2020 - at a distance of 1.7 million miles.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A first: Scientists grow plants in soil from the Moon:

In a new paper published in the journal Communications Biology, University of Florida researchers showed that plants can successfully sprout and grow in lunar soil. Their study also investigated how plants respond biologically to the Moon's soil, also known as lunar regolith, which is radically different from soil found on Earth.

This work is a first step toward one day growing plants for food and oxygen on the Moon or during space missions. More immediately, this research comes as the Artemis Program plans to return humans to the Moon.

[...] "For future, longer space missions, we may use the Moon as a hub or launching pad. It makes sense that we would want to use the soil that's already there to grow plants," Ferl said. "So, what happens when you grow plants in lunar soil, something that is totally outside of a plant's evolutionary experience? What would plants do in a lunar greenhouse? Could we have lunar farmers?"

[...] The complication: The scientists only had 12 grams -- just a few teaspoons -- of lunar soil with which to do this experiment. On loan from NASA, this soil was collected during the Apollo 11, 12 and 17 missions to the Moon. Paul and Ferl applied three times over the course of 11 years for a chance to work with the lunar regolith.

[...] Before the experiment, the researchers weren't sure if the seeds planted in the lunar soils would sprout. But nearly all of them did.

upstart writes:

Practical bruteforce of AES-1024 military grade encryption:

I recently presented work on the analysis of a file encryption solution that claimed to implement "AES-1024 military grade encryption". Spoiler alert: I did not break AES, and this work does not concern the security of AES. You may find advanced research regarding this topic.

This project started during a forensic analysis. One of my colleagues came with a USB stick containing a vault encrypted with SanDisk Secure Access software. He asked me if it was possible to bruteforce the password of the vault to recover the content. I did not know this software thus, I started to research. It appeared that this solution is distributed by Sandisk by default on any storage device you buy from them.

The solution is convenient, it allows a user to run the binary on the disk and after entering her correct password her vault is unlocked and the files are accessible. Once the software is closed, the files are encrypted back and not accessible anymore. So far nothing uncommon, but one thing drew my attention. In the Options menu, you can choose your "Preferred encryption method".

[...] They claimed to provide "Ultimate encryption using 1024 bit AES keys, Military grade". Thus for all those reasons, I decided to analyze the solution to figure out how it was implemented.

upstart writes:

Google Cloud launches its own version of PostgreSQL:

At its Google IO 2022 event, the company pitched AlloyDB as a new modernization option for users transitioning away from legacy databases.

Google claims that compared with standard PostgreSQL, AlloyDB was more than four times faster for transactional workloads in its performance tests, and up to 100 times faster for analytical queries.

AlloyDB was also two times faster for transactional workloads than Amazon's comparable service, Google claimed in a dig at its cloud hosting rival.

In addition, Google says the service uses the same blocks that power Google services such as YouTube, Search, Maps, and Gmail.

[...] The new service has also maintained full compatibility with PostgreSQL 14 according to Google, the latest version of the open-source database, enabling users to reuse their existing development skills and tools, and migrate existing PostgreSQL applications without code changes

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Land-Building Marsh Plants are Champions of Carbon Capture:

Human activities such as marsh draining for agriculture and logging are increasingly eating away at saltwater and freshwater wetlands that cover only 1% of Earth's surface but store more than 20% of all the climate-warming carbon dioxide absorbed by ecosystems worldwide.

A new study published May 5 in Science by a team of Dutch, American and German scientists shows that it's not too late to reverse the losses.

The key to success, the paper's authors say, is using innovative restoration practices -- identified in the new paper -- that replicate natural landscape-building processes and enhance the restored wetlands' carbon-storing potential.

And doing it on a large scale.

[...] "More than half of all wetland restorations fail because the landscape-forming properties of the plants are insufficiently taken into account," said study coauthor Tjisse van der Heide of the Royal Institute for Sea Research and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Planting seedlings and plugs in orderly rows equidistant from each other may seem logical, but it's counter-productive, he said.

"Restoration is much more successful when the plants are placed in large dense clumps, when their landscape-forming properties are mimicked, or simply when very large areas are restored in one go," van der Heide said.

"Following this guidance will allow us to restore lost wetlands at a much larger scale and increase the odds that they will thrive and continue to store carbon and perform other vital ecosystem services for years to come," Silliman said. "The plants win, the planet wins, we all win."

Journal Reference:
R.J.M. Temmink, L.P.M. Lamers, C. Angelini, et al., Recovering Wetland Biogeomorphic Feedbacks to Restore the World's Biotic Carbon Hotspots, Science, 2022.
DOI: 10.1126/science.abn1479

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Results of a study that asked participants to take a week-long break from social media find positive effects for wellbeing, depression and anxiety.

Asking people to stop using social media for just one week could lead to significant improvements in their wellbeing, depression and anxiety and could, in the future, be recommended as a way to help people manage their mental health say the authors of a new study.

The study, carried out by a team of researchers at the University of Bath (UK), studied the mental health effects of a week-long social media break. For some participants in the study, this meant freeing-up around nine hours of their week which would otherwise have been spent scrolling Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

[...] Participants reported spending an average of 8 hours per week on social media at the start of the study. One week later, the participants who were asked to take the one-week break had significant improvements in wellbeing, depression, and anxiety than those who continued to use social media, suggesting a short-term benefit.

[...] "Of course, social media is a part of life and for many people, it's an indispensable part of who they are and how they interact with others. But if you are spending hours each week scrolling and you feel it is negatively impacting you, it could be worth cutting down on your usage to see if it helps."

[...] Over the past 15 years, social media has revolutionised how we communicate, underscored by the huge growth the main platforms have observed. In the UK the number of adults using social media increased from 45% in 2011 to 71% in 2021. Among 16 to 44-year-olds, as many as 97% of us use social media and scrolling is the most frequent online activity we perform.

Journal Reference:
Jeffrey Lambert et al. Taking a One-Week Break from Social Media Improves Well-Being, Depression, and Anxiety: A Randomized Controlled Trial [open] Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2022
DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2021.0324

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A new method of lie detection shows that lie tellers who are made to multi-task while being interviewed are easier to spot:

It is well documented that lying during interviews takes up more cognitive energy than telling the truth. A new study by the University of Portsmouth found that investigators who used this finding to their advantage by asking a suspect to carry out an additional, secondary, task while being questioned were more likely to expose lie tellers. The extra brain power needed to concentrate on a secondary task (other than lying) was particularly challenging for lie tellers.

[...] "Our research has shown that truths and lies can sound equally plausible as long as lie tellers are given a good opportunity to think what to say. When the opportunity to think becomes less, truths often sound more plausible than lies. Lies sounded less plausible than truths in our experiment, particularly when the interviewees also had to carry out a secondary task and were told that this task was important."

[...] Professor Vrij said: "The pattern of results suggests that the introduction of secondary tasks in an interview could facilitate lie detection but such tasks need to be introduced carefully. It seems that a secondary task will only be effective if lie tellers do not neglect it. This can be achieved by either telling interviewees that the secondary task is important, as demonstrated in this experiment, or by introducing a secondary task that cannot be neglected (such as gripping an object, holding an object into the air, or driving a car simulator). Secondary tasks that do not fulfil these criteria are unlikely to facilitate lie detection."

So if you think your significant other is hiding something from you, grill them when they're driving a car.

Journal Reference:
Aldert Vrij et al., The Effects of a Secondary Task on True and False Opinion Statements [open], Int J Psychol Behav Anal, 8, 2022
DOI: 10.15344/2455-3867/2022/185

Original Submission

NPC-131072 writes:

From Malware Bytes Blog

On May 11, 2022, the EU will publicize a proposal for a law on mandatory chat control. The European Commission wants all providers of email, chat and messaging services to search for suspicious messages in a fully automated way and forward them to the police in the fight against child pornography.

[...] Similar developments are taking place in the US and the supporting narrative has expanded from domestic terrorism to other illegal content and activity, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, terrorism, foreign adversaries‚ and attempts to undermine democratic values and institutions.

[...] What most, if not all, of these activities have in common is that you usually won't see the criminals using the same platforms as those of us that want to stay in touch with friends and relatives. They are already conducting their "business" in illegal marketplaces on the Dark Web, or they are using encrypted phone services.

[...] Since client-side scanning technologies may represent the most powerful surveillance system ever imagined, it is imperative that we find a way to make them abuse-resistant and auditable before we decide to start using them. Failures from the past have taught us that it's often the other way around. We learn from our mistakes, but how costly are they?

Also at:
    The Guardian
    Patrick Breyer

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Slow walking may be to blame for perceived congestion in pedestrian areas:

If you live in a town or city, you are probably experienced in the art of navigating through crowded areas. But sometimes you can't help but feel like your surroundings are too congested for comfort. Intuition tells us this feeling must be because of the sheer volume of people around us in these moments that causes the perception of somewhere being too congested. But Project Assistant Professor Jia Xiaolu from the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Tokyo wanted to verify this assumption, and ended up proving that it might not actually be the entire truth of the matter.

"Perception of congestion is an important matter for those designing spaces to be used by people, so if there's a way to estimate this perceptual value, it would be useful to know," said Xiaolu. [...]

"That the velocity of pedestrians rather than density of the crowd better indicates perceived congestion was a bit of a surprise," said Xiaolu. "But it leads us to believe that people perceive a space too congested when they are simply unable to walk at the speed they wish to; there is a gap between their desired and actual velocity. [...]

"We found that women and also older people generally felt less constrained than men and younger people, which is probably due to their lower desired velocity, thus a smaller gap between their desired and actual velocity," said Xiaolu. "And while this is interesting, I think our future studies will focus on spaces where the objective is not so much about getting from A to B, but more goal oriented, such as interacting with a service in a store, gallery or other destination."

Original material: https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00219.html

Journal Reference:
Xiaolu Jia et al., Revisiting the level-of-service framework for pedestrian comfortability: velocity depicts more accurate perceived congestion than local density, Transportation Research, 2022.
DOI: 10.1016/j.trf.2022.04.007

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Algae-powered computing: Scientists create reliable and renewable biological photovoltaic cell:

Researchers have used a widespread species of blue-green algae to power a microprocessor continuously for a year -- and counting -- using nothing but ambient light and water. Their system has potential as a reliable and renewable way to power small devices.

The system, comparable in size to an AA battery, contains a type of non-toxic algae called Synechocystis that naturally harvests energy from the sun through photosynthesis. The tiny electrical current this generates then interacts with an aluminium electrode and is used to power a microprocessor.

[...] "The growing Internet of Things needs an increasing amount of power, and we think this will have to come from systems that can generate energy, rather than simply store it like batteries," said Professor Christopher Howe in the University of Cambridge's Department of Biochemistry, joint senior author of the paper.

[...] In the experiment, the device was used to power an Arm Cortex M0+, which is a microprocessor used widely in Internet of Things devices. It operated in a domestic environment and semi-outdoor conditions under natural light and associated temperature fluctuations, and after six months of continuous power production the results were submitted for publication.

Journal Reference:
P. Bombelli, A. Savanth, A. Scarampi, et al. Powering a microprocessor by photosynthesis, Energy & Environmental Science, 2022.
DOI: 10.1039/D2EE00233G

Original Submission

Two submitted stories talk about new developments in the DNF saga. Both stories are much longer than can be summarized here, but are worth the read (and pictures):

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Duke Nukem Forever's 2001 build appears online, may fully leak in June

The game's latest leak, posted to 4chan on Sunday and widely shared by Duke Nukem fansite duke4.net, appears to be made of original 2001 code and assets. It includes a one-minute video of first-person carnage in a very Duke-appropriate environment of a strip club called "Slick Willy." The sequence was apparently played and captured by the build's leaker.

In addition, the leaker suggested that the build's playable files, source code, and official map editor could be released in June—which would coincide with the E3 trailer's 21st anniversary—and responded to various 4chan doubters by posting additional images based on their requests. These included screengrabs of the build's file and folder lists, along with images from other sections of the game and a higher-res peek at "the redneck from the E3 trailer."

Shortly after the video and its related screencaps made the rounds, former Duke Nukem Forever project lead George Broussard confirmed its apparent authenticity on Twitter, telling fans that "the leak looks real." He said that while it may be playable, it shouldn't be looked at as a game, "just a smattering of barely populated test levels."

takyon writes:

We have played the lost Duke Nukem Forever build from 2001

Earlier this week, a retro game leaker teased '90s shooter fans with something they'd never seen before [...] Was this an elaborate fan-made fake of Duke-like content in a dated 3D engine, or would this turn out to be the real deal?

We thought we'd have to wait until June for an answer, as this week's leaker suggested that the build and its source code would be released to coincide with the 21st anniversary of the game's tantalizing E3 2001 trailer. But after this week's tease, the leakers decided to jump the gun. On Tuesday, 1.9GB of Duke Nukem Forever files landed on various file-sharing sites (which we will not link here), and Ars Technica has confirmed that those files are legitimate.

As it turns out, this is a surprisingly playable version of Duke Nukem Forever from October 2001, though with so many bugs and incomplete sections, that's not saying much. Most of this content, which includes moments from the aforementioned E3 trailer, was shelved by the time the game reached a cobbled-together retail state in 2011. So we're finally getting a closer look at how the game could have turned out differently if it had launched closer to 2001.

Now that the code is out, do you think the community can finish the game in a state that will live up to its original promises?

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

upstart writes:

Restoring Hearing: New Tool To Create Ear Hair Cells Lost Due to Aging or Noise:

Hearing loss caused by aging, noise, and some cancer therapy medications and antibiotics has been irreversible because scientists have not been able to reprogram existing cells to develop into the outer and inner ear sensory cells — essential for hearing — once they die.

But Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a single master gene that programs ear hair cells into either outer or inner ones, overcoming a major hurdle that had previously prevented the development of these cells to restore hearing, according to new research published today (May 4, 2022) in the journal Nature.

[...] Currently, scientists can produce an artificial hair cell, but it does not differentiate into an inner or outer cell, each of which provides different essential functions to produce hearing. The discovery is a major step toward developing these specific cells.

The death of outer hair cells made by the cochlea is most often the cause of deafness and hearing loss. The cells develop in the embryo and do not reproduce. The outer hair cells expand and contract in response to the pressure from sound waves and amplify sound for the inner hair cells. The inner cells transmit those vibrations to the neurons to create the sounds we hear.

[...] . "We can now figure out how to make specifically inner or outer hair cells and identify why the latter are more prone to dying and cause deafness, "García-Añoveros said. He stressed this research is still in the experimental stage.

Journal Reference:
Jaime García-Añoveros et al. Tbx2 is a master regulator of inner versus outer hair cell differentiation, Nature, 2022
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04668-3

Original Submission