SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

US Senators [...] want to ban Internet data caps. The senators today introduced the "Uncap America Act," which would "prohibit predatory data caps that force families to pay high costs and unnecessary fees to access high-speed broadband," they said in a press release.

"A broadband Internet access service provider shall not impose a data cap except when tailored primarily for the purposes of reasonable network management or managing network congestion," the bill says. The proposed law would order the Federal Communications Commission to issue "regulations to define the conditions under which a data cap is to be considered tailored to the purpose of reasonable network management or managing network congestion."

Data caps that don't comply with the exceptions would violate the Communications Act. "While certain broadband Internet access service networks may require practices to effectively manage congestion, those practices should be tailored to improve equitable access among consumers," the bill says. "Unnecessary data caps limit participation in the digital economy and are contrary to the public interest."

The bill can be expected to attract fierce opposition from the broadband industry and would face long odds of passing through the Senate and House. If it does become law, it would likely prohibit the home Internet data caps imposed by Comcast and others, which clearly exist for financial purposes and not for any network management need.

[...] "Americans need fast, reliable, and affordable Internet connections that are free from the burden of data caps that chill Internet use and make it more expensive," said Consumer Reports Senior Policy Counsel Jonathan Schwantes. "Where caps are legitimate and justified, so be it. But we can't allow ISPs to maximize profits at the expense of consumers."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

The push toward specialized products, including your cup of coffee, is transforming markets as big and small firms inspire one another:

A time traveller from the early 1990s would be baffled by the coffee marketplace of 2022. What's latte art? Or grind uniformity? Or single-origin beans? And who cares anyway?

That time traveller would discover that a lot of people care and care passionately. Just as the markets of once-mundane items like beer, beignets, chocolate or meat have diversified and specialized to appeal to more discerning consumers, so too has the coffee market.

Connoisseurs commonly discuss defining aspects of third-wave coffee such as tasting notes, regional characteristics and roasting techniques. Coffee consumption has surged in the past decades thanks in part to the growth of the craft coffee community, and big commercial players are taking notice.

[...] "Craft firms believe that products or services should be a highly aesthetic experience," Dolbec says. For example, in coffee, the aesthetic experience — the acid notes of the brew, the latte art, the aroma — are all highly valued by craft coffee producer and consumer alike.

This contrasts with commercial firms, which seek first and foremost to maximize their profits, and whose products are designed to appeal to mass markets. Yet, the study finds that commercial firms are increasingly responding to the rise of craft firms by drawing inspiration from their highly aestheticized products and service.

[...] "All types of firms elaborate to compete against one another," Dolbec says. "They adapt innovations from firms of the same type, they transform innovations from firms that follow a different logic and over time that leads to craft logic becoming more present in the market. Just as you have Tim Horton's talking about homemade espresso drinks, you'll start seeing craft firms selling their own kinds of coffee pods."

Journal Reference:
Pierre-Yann Dolbec, Zeynep Arsel, and Aya Aboelenien, A Practice Perspective on Market Evolution: How Craft and Commercial Coffee Firms Expand Practices and Develop Markets [open], J Marketing, 2022. DOI: 10.1177/00222429221093624

Original Submission

NASA Selects Falcon Heavy to Launch Roman Space Telescope (WFIRST)

takyon writes:

NASA selects Falcon Heavy to launch Roman Space Telescope

NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope on a Falcon Heavy, but at a price significantly higher than most previous agency contracts.

NASA announced July 19 that it awarded a contract to SpaceX to launch Roman on the company's Falcon Heavy rocket in October 2026 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The contract is valued at $255 million for the launch and other mission-related costs.

Roman is the next large, or flagship, astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope. The spacecraft features a 2.4-meter primary mirror, donated to NASA a decade ago by the National Reconnaissance Office, with a wide field instrument and a coronagraph to conduct research in cosmology, exoplanets and general astrophysics.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

The James Webb Telescope Has Already Made its First Scientific Discovery

upstart writes:

The James Webb Telescope Has Already Made Its First Scientific Discovery:

First comes the art, them comes the science. Just over a week after NASA dazzled the world with the first clutch of images from the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers working with one of the pictures believe they have found the oldest galaxy ever imaged—one dating back 13.5 billion years, or just 300 million years after the Big Bang, report Space.com and others.

The age of a galaxy is measured by what is known as its red shift: as the universe expands, the wavelength of light is stretched into the red spectrum. The redder the image, the greater the stretching and the farther—and older—the object in the image is. Analyzing the deep-field image the Webb telescope returned, a team led by astronomer Rohan Naidu of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics detected a galaxy with a shift that fixes it at the 13.5 billion year point.

"We're potentially looking at the most distant starlight ever seen," Naidu told France 24. The next step is to submit their findings for peer review that should hopefully validate their discovery.

The galaxy is not much as these things go. It measures 3,000 to 4,500 light years across and contains about a billion stars. In comparison, our Milky Way measures about 100,000 light years and contains an estimated 200 billion stars. But seeing something 13.5 billion light years away means we're seeing it as it looked 13.5 billion years ago. Over time, the small, old galaxy would have merged with others nearby, forming a single, giant galactic mass.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Go back over 100 years and zoos provided most people of their only view of animals that many would not have otherwise seen except in drawings. Very few photographs or films were available and people who could afford to would flock to see what must have been almost like science fiction to many of them.

Moving on a few years, and zoos became viewed as a cruel way of keeping animals in captivity for little justifiable reason. Photographs and films were becoming available and then along came television which meant that many more people could see images of animals, often in their native environment. Zoos became less popular and the cost of looking after animals increased to make a visit to the zoo a far more expensive day out than it had been up until this point.

Many zoos changed into wildlife parks, or at least were replaced by such things. More importantly, as it became clear that many animals were facing extinction in the wild, the remaining zoos and parks began cooperative breeding programs to ensure that some species would not disappear quite as quickly as was once feared. The situation today is perhaps slightly better than it was for some animals but, outside of zoos, many have been left with very little natural habitat because of man's demands for living space and resources of all kinds.

Which brings us to this particular piece. It is not earth shattering news, but a panda has lived to the ripe old equivalent age of 105 years in captivity. Has it been a benefit to this panda in particular or even to pandas in general? What are your views on the role of zoos and wildlife parks in the modern world? [JR]

From the following story:

An An, the world’s oldest male giant panda in captivity, has died at the age of 35, the equivalent of 105 years old for a human.

Ocean Park, the Hong Kong theme park where the panda lived, said An An’s health had been declining in recent weeks and he had been eating less. The panda was put down by a veterinarian on Thursday morning after he stopped eating altogether.

“Ocean Park is deeply saddened to announce the loss of An An,” it said in a statement on its website.

An An was a gift from the Chinese government and had been at the park since 1999. Jia Jia, the female panda who was given to Ocean Park with An An, died in 2016 when she was 38.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The Federal Communications Commission on Friday ordered phone carriers to block calls from a scamming operation behind more than 8 billion robocalls:

The agency mandated U.S. providers to stop carrying traffic originating from the Sumco Panama company and the two people allegedly behind it, Aaron Michael Jones and Roy Cox. Jr., both of California.

The group is accused of making more than 8 billion robocalls to U.S. consumers since 2018, marketing an auto-warranty scam, records show.

[...] FCC data estimates Sumco Panama generates millions of calls on a daily basis.

Earlier this month, the agency sent cease-and-desist letters to a number of carriers to halt the calls, including Call Pipe, Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Global Lynks, Mobi Telecom, South Dakota Telecom, SipKonnect and Virtual Telecom.

"Now that U.S. voice service providers know the individuals and entities associated with this scheme, the Enforcement Bureau will closely monitor voice service providers' compliance with this order and take appropriate enforcement action as necessary," Acting FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a statement.

[...] "Billions of auto warranty robocalls from a single calling campaign -- billions!" FCC Rosenworcel said earlier this month. "Auto warranty scams are one of the top complaints we get from consumers and it's time to hold those responsible for making these junk calls."

See also: FCC Orders Blocking of Auto Warranty Robocall Scam Campaign

Anyone know how telephony works these days? Why is it hard to address robocalls and other issues like phone number spoofing? It seems since both endpoints of a call are fixed that it should be easy to tell where a call originates and from what number. Is this a common scam outside the US?

Original Submission

liar writes:

Two decades of Alzheimer's research may be based on deliberate fraud that has cost millions of lives

Over the last two decades, Alzheimer's drugs have been notable mostly for having a 99% failure rate in human trials. It's not unusual for drugs that are effective in vitro and in animal models to turn out to be less than successful when used in humans, but Alzheimer's has a record that makes the batting average in other areas look like Hall of Fame material.

And now we have a good idea of why. Because it looks like the original paper that established the amyloid plaque model as the foundation of Alzheimer's research over the last 16 years might not just be wrong, but a deliberate fraud.

The suspicion that something was more than a little wrong with the model that is getting almost all Alzheimer's research funding ($1.6 billion in the last year alone) began with a fight over the drug Simufilam. The drug was being pushed into trials by its manufacturer, Cassava Sciences, but a group of scientists who reviewed the drug maker's claims about Simufilam believed that it was exaggerating the potential [...] and hired an investigator to provide some support for this position.

[...] In 2006, Nature published a paper titled "A specific amyloid-β protein assembly in the brain impairs memory." Using a series of studies in mice, the paper concluded that "memory deficits in middle-aged mice" were directed caused by accumulations of a soluble substance called "Aβ*56." [...]

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Meetings don't work. Or, at least, the majority of staff meetings are time-wasting, productivity-killing, creativity-stifling products of wishful or delusional thinking. Before the pandemic and its mass movement to remote and hybrid work, meetings were already problematic.

We've all seen how meetings fail.

Most meetings in the office result from a policy to hold regular — often weekly — staff "update" meetings. Or they're the result of procrastination. We can't make a decision right now, so let's schedule a meeting. Or some new initiative, problem, or idea inspires action, and scheduling a meeting feels like action.

Once the meeting begins, eyes glaze, and some meeting participants start mentally tuning out the conversation while pretending to pay attention. (Others don't even pretend; it's become increasingly normal or acceptable to stay glued to a laptop or phone screen during meetings.

Meetings are often dominated by attention-seekers, ladder climbers, extroverts, and long-winded speech-makers. In contrast, others mostly remain silent with little to no correlation between saying something and having something to say. Meetings suppress creative thought. Most end in a fog of vagueness, without clear objectives, deadlines, and assignments.

And employees hate them.

[...] Making meeting matters worse, flex work schedules and the globalization of workforces mean that getting everybody into the same meeting simultaneously has become impractical.

[...] So it's time to cancel your meetings, clear your calendar and embrace the available new technology. And you definitely don't need to set up a meeting to decide to do so.

Is there anybody in our community who thinks that the meetings they have to attend are productive and worthwhile? In what way do they differ from those described here. What is your favourite ploy when you have to attend and want to appear interested without actually being so? [JR]

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Sleep quality and circadian rhythms in night shift workers was found to be poorer than in those who worked day shifts:

Scientists at the University of Warwick, jointly with those at Université Paris-Saclay, Inserm and Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris (France), have challenged the widespread belief that shift workers adjust to the night shift, using data drawn from wearable tech.

By monitoring groups of French hospital workers working day or night shifts during their working and free time, the researchers have not only shown that night work significantly disrupts both their sleep quality and their circadian rhythms, but also that workers can experience such disruption even after years of night shift work.

Their findings, reported in a study in the Lancet group journal eBioMedicine, are the most detailed analysis of the sleep and circadian rhythm profiles of shift workers yet attempted, and the first to also monitor body temperature. This key circadian rhythm is driven by the brain pacemaker clock, and coordinates the peripheral clocks in all organs.

[...] Analysis by the University of Warwick statisticians of interruptions to sleep and rhythmic variations in core body temperature showed that night-shift workers had less than half the median regularity and quality of sleep of their day-shift colleagues. 48% of the night-shift workers had a disrupted circadian temperature rhythm.

[...] Importantly, even workers who had been on night shifts for many years still showed these negative effects on circadian and sleep health. The more years they had been on night work, the more severe the circadian disruption, contradicting widespread assumptions about adaptation to night work.

[...] Professor Bärbel Finkenstädt from the University of Warwick Department of Statistics said: "There's still an assumption that if you do night work, you adjust at some stage. But you don't. We saw that most workers compensate in terms of quantity of sleep, but not in terms of quality during the work time."

Journal Reference:
Yiyuan Zhang, Emilie Cordina-Duverger, Sandra Komarzynski, et al., Digital circadian and sleep health in individual hospital shift workers: A cross sectional telemonitoring study [open], eBioMedicine, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.104121

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Strange New Phase of Matter Created in Quantum Computer Acts Like It Has Two Time Dimensions:

By shining a laser pulse sequence inspired by the Fibonacci numbers at atoms inside a quantum computer, physicists have created a remarkable, never-before-seen phase of matter. The phase has the benefits of two time dimensions despite there still being only one singular flow of time, the physicists report July 20 in Nature.

This mind-bending property offers a sought-after benefit: Information stored in the phase is far more protected against errors than with alternative setups currently used in quantum computers. As a result, the information can exist without getting garbled for much longer, an important milestone for making quantum computing viable, says study lead author Philipp Dumitrescu.

The approach's use of an "extra" time dimension "is a completely different way of thinking about phases of matter," says Dumitrescu, who worked on the project as a research fellow at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Quantum Physics in New York City. "I've been working on these theory ideas for over five years, and seeing them come actually to be realized in experiments is exciting."

[...] The workhorses of the team's quantum computer are 10 atomic ions of an element called ytterbium. Each ion is individually held and controlled by electric fields produced by an ion trap, and can be manipulated or measured using laser pulses.

Each of those atomic ions serves as what scientists dub a quantum bit, or 'qubit.' Whereas traditional computers quantify information in bits (each representing a 0 or a 1), the qubits used by quantum computers leverage the strangeness of quantum mechanics to store even more information. Just as Schrödinger's cat is both dead and alive in its box, a qubit can be a 0, a 1 or a mashup — or 'superposition' — of both. That extra information density and the way qubits interact with one another promise to allow quantum computers to tackle computational problems far beyond the reach of conventional computers.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged a former Coinbase manager and two co-conspirators with wire fraud conspiracy and scheme to commit insider trading in cryptocurrency assets.

This is the first case of its kind in litigation history and a signal that those performing cryptocurrency and NFT fraud will be targeted by law enforcement.

Coinbase is an American cryptocurrency exchange platform with almost 90 million registered users and a revenue of $7.84 billion (2021).

Defendant Ishan Wahi, who worked as a product manager for the company, is accused of abusing his position and insider knowledge to make cryptocurrency investments that were almost guaranteed to rise in price.

“Although the allegations in this case relate to transactions made in a crypto exchange – rather than a more traditional financial market – they still constitute insider trading,” commented FBI’s Assistant Director, Michael J. Driscoll.

[...] Coinbase periodically adds new crypto assets on its platform to provide its users with fresh investment opportunities.

The value of these coins and tokens typically increases when a large platform like Coinbase makes them available for purchase, so those investing in them before the event are set to make a profit.

Ishan Wahi knew when Coinbase was planning to add new cryptocurrency assets before the company announced it publicly, so he coordinated with his co-conspirators to purchase large amounts in advance.

[...] “Our message with these charges is clear: fraud is fraud is fraud, whether it occurs on the blockchain or on Wall Street.  And the Southern District of New York will continue to be relentless in bringing fraudsters to justice, wherever we may find them,” warned U.S. Attorney Damian Williams.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Even young babies are aware of the basic physics of everyday objects:

Inspired by research into how infants learn, computer scientists have created a program that can pick up simple physical rules about the behaviour of objects — and express surprise when they seem to violate those rules. The results were published on 11 July in Nature Human Behaviour.

Developmental psychologists test how babies understand the motion of objects by tracking their gaze. When shown a video of, for example, a ball that suddenly disappears, the children express surprise, which researchers quantify by measuring how long the infants stare in a particular direction.

Luis Piloto, a computer scientist at Google-owned company DeepMind in London, and his collaborators wanted to develop a similar test for artificial intelligence (AI). The team trained a neural network — a software system that learns by spotting patterns in large amounts of data — with animated videos of simple objects such as cubes and balls.

[...] Developmental psychologists test how babies understand the motion of objects by tracking their gaze. When shown a video of, for example, a ball that suddenly disappears, the children express surprise, which researchers quantify by measuring how long the infants stare in a particular direction.

Luis Piloto, a computer scientist at Google-owned company DeepMind in London, and his collaborators wanted to develop a similar test for artificial intelligence (AI). The team trained a neural network — a software system that learns by spotting patterns in large amounts of data — with animated videos of simple objects such as cubes and balls.

Journal Reference:
Piloto, Luis S., Weinstein, Ari, Battaglia, Peter, et al. Intuitive physics learning in a deep-learning model inspired by developmental psychology [open], Nature Human Behaviour (DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01394-8)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A restaurant in southwestern China was discovered to be harboring ancient history, as dinosaur footprints—dating back 100 million years—were found in the establishment's outdoor courtyard.

Footprints of two sauropods, a type of dinosaur that lived during the early Cretaceous period, were found along several stones in the outdoor courtyard at the restaurant in Leshan, Sichuan province according to paleontologists. The restaurant previously had been a farm and the footprints had been buried by layers of dirt to shield them from weather damage.

[...] Sauropods' species include the popularized brontosaurus and were known for their long necks and tails. They're considered to be the largest animals ever to walk the Earth—extending the length of three school buses—according to research by the University of California, Berkeley. Xing noted that the footprints of the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth found in the restaurant measured around 26 feet in body length.

The find in Sichuan is also rare because it dates back to the Cretaceous period, believed to be a glory era for the dinosaurs by many paleontologists.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Nikon is reportedly halting DSLR camera development:

Nikon will stop developing new single lens reflex (SLR) cameras and focus exclusively on mirrorless models, according to a report from Nikkei. The news marks the end of an era and essentially confirms what most observers already expected, as the Japanese company hasn't released a new digital SLR (DSLR) camera since the D6 came out in June of 2020. While it reportedly won't design any more new models, Nikon will continue to produce and distribute existing DSLRs like the D6 and D3500 (above).

Nikon released its first single-lens reflex film camera, the Nikon F, back in 1959. It was one of the most advanced cameras of its time, thanks to features like a large bayonet mount, depth-of-field preview button, titanium focal-plane shutter, modular design and more. The company's first true professional digital SLR was the 2.7-megapixel D1, launched in 1999.

SLR cameras use a mirror and prism to give the user a direct optical view through the camera lens, with the mirror moving out of the way when the photo is taken. Mirrorless cameras, by contrast, take light directly from the lens to the sensor and give the user a view via an electronic viewfinder or rear display. Mirrorless cameras, as we discussed in our explainer and video below, allow for more compact bodies, advanced AI subject recognition, improved video features and more.

[...] Update 7/12/2022 9:57 AM ET: Update gave the following statement on its website: "There was a media article regarding Nikon's withdrawal of SLR development. This media article is only speculation and Nikon has made no announcement in this regards. Nikon is continuing the production, sales and service of digital SLR. Nikon appreciate your continuous support."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google Engineers Lift The Lid On Carbon - A Hopeful Successor To C++

In addition to Dart, Golang, and being involved with other programming language initiatives over the years, [Google's] latest effort that was made public on Tuesday is Carbon. The Carbon programming language hopes to be the gradual successor to C++ and makes for an easy transition path moving forward.

The hope is that Carbon is a more natural migration path to C++ than the popular Rust programming language. Carbon aims for performance that matches C++, seamless bidirectional interoperability with C++, a easier learning curve for C++ developers, comparable expressivity, and scalable migration.

Carbon Language on GitHub.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Professional Athletes Perform Better against Former Clubs, According to Research:

A team of Russian researchers affiliated with the HSE University, RANEPA, and NES found professional athletes to perform better against their former clubs. At least in some circumstances, emotions seem to have a greater effect on their performance than knowledge of the opponent's tactics. The study's findings are published in the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics and may be useful for coaches, sports managers, and bookmakers.

By hiring a competitor's former employee, companies bring in their social capital, knowledge and skills, potentially weakening the competition. Since measuring employee performance may be difficult in a typical business environment, this study examined the sphere of professional sports, where such data is abundant, to track changes in athletes' performance against their former teams.

The study used econometric models on game data of the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL), and six major European football leagues, available from the NBA.com, Hockey-Reference and Understat. The authors examined player performance data over time, taking into account history of transactions and players' matches against their former clubs. The variables included the dates and venues of the games, players' home and opposing teams, playing time, basic individual game statistics, and several more advanced performance indicators.

[...] The researchers assumed that the knowledge of opponents' tactics and the additional motivation both contributed to athletes' better performance against former clubs. While these two factors are likely to complement each other, the researchers ultimately found emotions to prevail over a better understanding of the other team's game.