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upstart writes:

3 reasons cloud computing doesn't save money:

I found this article interesting, especially the statement, "Over the past decade, cloud adoption has become the rule, not the exception. And yet, many companies that have embraced the cloud are feeling the acute burden of a spike in spending. In other words, cloud usage costs may be costing many businesses more than they are actually saving."

Other recent articles and studies say the same thing. The initial perception that cloud computing would lead to operational cost savings did not pan out for many Global 2000 companies.

[...] First, there is little or no monitoring. A common problem is enterprises have ineffective or no cloud cost management operations, also known as cloud finops (financial operations). Finops should include cloud cost observability systems that report what's spent where, by whom, and for what purpose, as well as the root cause of the spending.

[...] Second, there is no discipline or accountability. A lack of cloud cost monitoring means we can't see what we're spending. The other side of this coin is a lack of accountability. Even when a business monitors cloud spending, that data is useless if everyone knows there are no penalties. Why should people change their behavior? They need known incentives to conserve cloud computing resources as well as known consequences.

[...] Third, the business can't or won't optimize cloud resources. One of the core goals of a sound finops program is to optimize cloud spending. Finops will report the measured value of all money spent on cloud-based resources that's returned to the business. The overall objective is to have more business value from fewer cloud computing dollars.

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upstart writes:

Airlines are trying to resurrect the Concorde era:

American Airlines on Tuesday announced that it would purchase a fleet of 20 planes from Boom Supersonic, a startup building aircraft that can travel faster than the speed of sound. The order came after United Airlines announced last year that it would buy 15 of the company's Overture planes. Passenger flights aren't expected until the end of the decade, but if everything goes according to plan, commercial supersonic flight could return for the first time since the age of the Concorde.

Boom says its planes are designed to go at speeds twice as fast as a typical flight. That would be fast enough to get someone from Newark to London in just three and a half hours, and from Los Angeles to Honolulu in just three hours. The first of these flights is scheduled for 2026, and the company plans to start carrying passengers by 2029. If all works out, United has the option to buy at least 35 more planes from the startup; American has the option to buy another 40.

But there's another twist. Boom also wants to make these flights environmentally friendly, promising that these planes will be "net-zero carbon from day one," and rely completely on sustainable aviation fuel, which is repurposed from waste or organic sources.

NotSanguine writes:

Ars Technica is reporting on a recent (22 August 2022) ruling from an Ohio Federal Court that "room scans" prior to testing is considered an impermissible search under the Fourth Amendment.

As the pandemic unfolded in spring 2020, an Educause survey found that an increasing number of students—who had very little choice but to take tests remotely—were increasingly putting up with potential privacy invasions from schools. Two years later, for example, it's considered a common practice that some schools record students throughout remote tests to prevent cheating, while others conduct room scans when the test begins.

Now—in an apparent privacy win for students everywhere—an Ohio judge has ruled[PDF] that the latter practice of scanning rooms is not only an invasion of privacy but a violation of the Fourth Amendment's guaranteed protection against unlawful searches in American homes.

The decision came after a Cleveland State University student, Aaron Ogletree, agreed to a room scan before a chemistry exam, even though his teacher had changed their policy, and he did not expect it to happen before the test. Because there were others in his home, he took the test in his bedroom, where he says he had sensitive tax documents spread out on a surface. These confidential documents, he claimed, could not be moved before the test and were visible in the room scan recording—which was shared with other students.

After the test, Ogletree sued Cleveland State for violating his Fourth Amendment rights, and Ohio judge J. Philip Calabrese decided yesterday that Ogletree was right: Room scans are unconstitutional.

hubie writes:

Your next wooden chair could arrive flat, then dry into a 3D shape (video):

Wooden objects are usually made by sawing, carving, bending or pressing. That's so old school! Today, scientists will describe how flat wooden shapes extruded by a 3D printer can be programmed to self-morph into complex 3D shapes. In the future, this technique could be used to make furniture or other wooden products that could be shipped flat to a destination and then dried to form the desired final shape.

[...] A few years ago, the team developed an environmentally friendly water-based ink composed of wood-waste microparticles known as "wood flour" mixed with cellulose nanocrystals and xyloglucan, which are natural binders extracted from plants. The researchers then began using the ink in a 3D printer. They recently discovered that the way the ink is laid down, or the "pathway," dictates the morphing behavior as the moisture content evaporates from the printed piece. For instance, a flat disk printed as a series of concentric circles dries and shrinks to form a saddle-like structure reminiscent of a Pringles® potato chip, and a disk printed as a series of rays emanating from a central point turns into a dome or cone-like structure.

The ultimate shape of the object can also be controlled by adjusting print speed, the team found. That's because shrinkage occurs perpendicular to the wood fibers in the ink, and print speed changes the degree of alignment of those fibers. A slower rate leaves the particles more randomly oriented, so shrinkage occurs in all directions. Faster printing aligns the fibers with one another, so shrinkage is more directional.

[...] Further refinement will allow the team to combine the saddles, domes, helices and other design motifs to produce objects with complicated final shapes, such as a chair. Ultimately, it could be possible to make wood products that are shipped flat to the end user, which could reduce shipping volume and costs, Kam says. "Then, at the destination, the object could warp into the structure you want." Eventually, it might be feasible to license the technology for home use so consumers could design and print their own wooden objects with a regular 3D printer, Sharon says.

Action video

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Xiaolang Zhang, a former Apple employee charged by the FBI in 2018 for stealing trade secrets about Apple's autonomous vehicle project, has pleaded guilty in a federal court in San Jose on Monday.

Zhang stole the trade secrets while preparing to work for Chinese electric vehicle startup Xiaopeng Motors, also known as XPeng. The FBI arrested Zhang at San Jose airport, California, on 7 July, while he was en route to China. 

Zhang was hired by Apple in 2015 where he would eventually work on hardware for Apple's secretive autonomous vehicle project. 

[...] After Zhang told Apple he planned to work for Xmotors, the iPhone-maker cut off his network access. A subsequent investigation by Apple found he'd downloaded documents and information from Apple databases.   

Besides downloading trade secret intellectual property, he also took a circuit board and server from Apple's car labs.  But the key documents, which formed the basis of the charge he pleaded guilty to, was a 25-page PDF file containing highly sensitive electrical schematics of circuit boards.

Zhang now faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for the charge of theft of trade secrets.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

How do we know that time exists?

The alarm goes off in the morning. You catch your morning train to the office. You take a lunch break. You catch your evening train back. You go for an hour’s run. Eat dinner. Go to bed. Repeat. Birthdays are celebrated, anniversaries chronicled, deaths commemorated. New countries are born, empires rise and fall.

The whole of human existence is bound to the passage of time. However, we can’t see it and we can’t touch it. So, how do we know that it’s really there?

“In physics, we have what we call the idea of ‘absolute time’ and it’s used to describe different changes as a sequence of events,” Koyama begins. “We use Newtonian physics to describe how things move, and time is an essential element of this.” Koyama is a Professor of Cosmology in the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at the University of Portsmouth.

To this day, classic Newtonian thought on time – where time is constant throughout the universe – is still a good approximation of how humans experience time in their daily lives. We all experience time in the same way and we all synchronize our clocks in the same way, no matter where we are in the world, whether that be London, Tokyo, New York, or Buenos Aires.

Physicists though have discovered that time can actually behave differently and is not as consistent as Newton thought.

“When we speak of time, we need to think of space as well – they come in a package together,” Koyama says. “We cannot disconnect the two, and the way that an object moves through space determines how it experiences time.”

In short, the time you experience depends on your velocity through space as the observer. This works as outlined through Einstein’s special relativity, a theory of how speed impacts mass, time, and space. Additionally, according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the gravity of a massive object can impact how quickly time passes. Many experiments have been undertaken that have since proven this to be true.

Physicists have even found that black holes warp the immediate space-time around them due to their immense gravitational fields. Supported by the European Research Council, Koyama continues to investigate this theory.

upstart writes:

The solutions to Einstein's equations that describe a spinning black hole won't blow up, even when poked or prodded:

In 1963, the mathematician Roy Kerr found a solution to Einstein's equations that precisely described the spacetime outside what we now call a rotating black hole. (The term wouldn't be coined for a few more years.) In the nearly six decades since his achievement, researchers have tried to show that these so-called Kerr black holes are stable. What that means, explained Jérémie Szeftel, a mathematician at Sorbonne University, "is that if I start with something that looks like a Kerr black hole and give it a little bump"—by throwing some gravitational waves at it, for instance—"what you expect, far into the future, is that everything will settle down, and it will once again look exactly like a Kerr solution."

The opposite situation—a mathematical instability—"would have posed a deep conundrum to theoretical physicists and would have suggested the need to modify, at some fundamental level, Einstein's theory of gravitation," said Thibault Damour, a physicist at the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies in France.

In a 912-page paper posted online on May 30, Szeftel, Elena Giorgi of Columbia University and Sergiu Klainerman of Princeton University have proved that slowly rotating Kerr black holes are indeed stable. The work is the product of a multiyear effort. The entire proof—consisting of the new work, an 800-page paper by Klainerman and Szeftel from 2021, plus three background papers that established various mathematical tools—totals roughly 2,100 pages in all.

The new result "does indeed constitute a milestone in the mathematical development of general relativity," said Demetrios Christodoulou, a mathematician at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich.

takyon writes:

StarFive VisionFive 2 quad-core RISC-V SBC launched for $46 and up

As expected, StarFive has officially unveiled the JH7110 quad-core RISC-V processor with 3D GPU and the VisionFive 2 SBC. I just did not expect the company to also launch a Kickstarter campaign for the board, and the version with 2GB RAM can be had for just about $46 for "early birds".

The VisionFive 2 ships with up to 8GB RAM, HDMI 2.0 and MIPI DSI display interfaces, dual Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 3.0/2.0 ports, a QSPI flash for the bootloader, as well as support for eMMC flash module, M.2 NVMe SSD, and microSD card storage.

Compared to the Raspberry Pi 4, it has better I/O, worse CPU performance, and potentially better GPU performance (it's an Imagination BXE-4-32), with similar price points for RAM amounts. It uses the the 100 × 72 mm "Pico-ITX" form factor like some recent RK3588 boards (RPi 4 is 85.6 mm × 56.5 mm).

Previously: Imagination Announces B-Series GPU IP: Scaling up with Multi-GPU
VisionFive V1 RISC-V Linux SBC Resurrects BeagleV Single Board Computer
Official Ubuntu RISC-V Images Released For StarFive's VisionFive Board

Original Submission

Snotnose writes:

From https://www.livescience.com/protons-charm-quark:

A proton is one of the subatomic particles that make up the nucleus of an atom. As small as protons are, they are composed of even tinier elementary particles known as quarks, which come in a variety of "flavors," or types: up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top. Typically, a proton is thought to be made of two up quarks and one down quark.

But a new study finds it's more complicated than that. Protons can also contain a charm quark, an elementary particle that's 1.5 times the mass of the proton itself. Even weirder, when the proton does contain the charm quark, the heavy particle still only carries about half the proton's mass.

The finding all comes down to the probabilistic world of quantum physics. Though the charm quark is heavy, the chance of it popping into existence in a proton is fairly small, so the high mass and small chance basically cancel each other out. Put another way, the full mass of the charm quark doesn't get taken up by the proton, even if the charm quark is there, Science News reported.

A recent Nature Podcast episode breaks this down very nicely as well. [hubie]

Journal Reference:
Richard D. Ball, Alessandro Candido, Juan Cruz-Martinez, et al. Evidence for intrinsic charm quarks in the proton [open], Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04998-2)

Original Submission

hubie writes:

New research reveals more about the magnitude of January eruption, as researchers call for better preparedness:

The initial tsunami wave created by the eruption of the underwater Hunga Tonga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga in January 2022 reached 90 metres in height, around nine times taller than that from the highly destructive 2011 Japan tsunami, new research has found.

An international research team says the eruption should serve as a wake-up call for international groups looking to protect people from similar events in future, claiming that detection and monitoring systems for volcano-based tsunamis are '30 years behind' comparable tools used to detect earthquake-based events.

[...] By comparison, the largest tsunami waves due to earthquakes before the Tonga event were recorded following the Tōhoku earthquake near Japan in 2011 and the 1960 Chilean earthquake, reaching 10 metres in initial height. Those were more destructive as they happened closer to land, with waves that were wider.

[...] The research team found that the tsunami was unique as the waves were created not only by the water displaced by the volcano's eruption, but also by huge atmospheric pressure waves, which circled around the globe multiple times. This 'dual mechanism' created a two-part tsunami – where initial ocean waves created by the atmospheric pressure waves were followed more than one hour later by a second surge created by the eruption's water displacement.

[...] The research team also found that the January event was among very few tsunamis powerful enough to travel around the globe – it was recorded in all world's oceans and large seas from Japan and the United States' western seaboard in the North Pacific Ocean to the coasts within the Mediterranean Sea.

Journal Reference:
Mohammad Heidarzadeh, Aditya Riadi Gusman, Takeo Ishibe, et al. Estimating the eruption-induced water displacement source of the 15 January 2022 Tonga volcanic tsunami from tsunami spectra and numerical modelling [open], Ocean Engineering, 261, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.oceaneng.2022.112165

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Conventional dental photography technology has had a limitation in using inconvenient tools such as mirrors and cheek retractors. Dentists require basic teeth images from various angles, such as right/left buccal and maxillary/mandibular occlusal, for dental health inspection. To acquire these images, patients feel discomfort because dentists must put a mirror into the mouth to capture the reflected teeth image through a handheld camera.

A compact intraoral dental camera can overcome the discomfort and scan the condition of teeth. However, due to the restricted depth of field and field-of-view, the conventional device has limitations in close-up imaging for observing tooth decay in detail and wide-angle imaging for capturing the entire arrangement of teeth.

Various species of compound insect eyes have superior visual characteristics, such as wide viewing angle and large depth of field with compact visual organs made up of tiny lenses. Insect eyes give inspiration for miniaturized cameras, and insect-inspired cameras can solve the problems of conventional compact cameras, such as limited observation range. However, previously developed insect cameras have drawbacks in low-resolution or limited functions.

[...] The BIOC involves a new configuration of convex-concave lens and inverted microlens arrays (iMLA) and a single CMOS image sensor on a flexible printed circuit board in a handpiece holder. The convex-concave lens substantially increases the field of view up to 143 degrees, and iMLAs reduce optical aberration by the scaling law. In addition, the new camera overcomes many chronic issues of conventional intraoral cameras, such as limited depth-of-field, thick total-track-length, and limited functional imaging.

There must be more potential uses for a camera such as this - any ideas?

More information: Kisoo Kim et al, Biologically inspired intraoral camera for multifunctional dental imaging, Journal of Optical Microsystems (2022).
DOI: 10.1117/1.JOM.2.3.031202

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Coffee and cigarettes: UF Health research sheds new light on nicotine and morning brew:

For some smokers, the first cigarette of the day is just not as satisfying without a cup of coffee. That could be more than just a morning habit: Chemical compounds in roasted coffee beans may help lighten the effects of morning nicotine cravings, University of Florida [UF] researchers have found.

In a cell-based study, the researchers identified two compounds in coffee that directly affect certain high-sensitivity nicotine receptors in the brain. In smokers, these brain receptors can be hypersensitive after a night of nicotine withdrawal.

The recently published findings have yet to be tested in humans but are an important step toward better understanding how coffee and cigarettes affect nicotine receptors in the brain, said Roger L. Papke, Ph.D., a pharmacology professor in the UF College of Medicine. Caffeine is coffee's feel-good ingredient for most people but smokers may get another kind of boost.

[...] The findings have led Papke to a broader hypothesis: One of the compounds in brewed coffee, known as n-MP, may help to quell morning nicotine cravings.

[...] The findings, he said, provide a good foundation for behavioral scientists who could further study nicotine withdrawal in animal models.

Journal Reference:
Roger L. Papkea, Madison Karaffaa, Nicole A. Horenstein, et al. Coffee and cigarettes: Modulation of high and low sensitivity α4β2 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors by n-MP, a biomarker of coffee consumption☆, Neuropharmacology, 216, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropharm.2022.109173

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Qualcomm is jumping back into the server CPU market with Nuvia acquisition:

Qualcomm is apparently plotting a return to the server chip market. The company is overhauling its CPU offerings after acquiring the upstart chip design company Nuvia in 2021. Nuvia was founded by three high-ranking engineers from Apple's chip division, with the original goal of designing ARM server chips (though it never launched a product). After Qualcomm bought the company, it seemingly pivoted its new chip division from server chips to laptops and phones. Now, according to a new report from Bloomberg, Nuvia's original goal of building server chips will be allowed to continue.

The report says Qualcomm is "seeking customers for a product stemming from last year's purchase of chip startup Nuvia" with Amazon Web Services as one of the first companies that "agreed to take a look at Qualcomm's offerings." Apple has proven to the world that ARM chips can scale up, and on laptops, they've proven to be more efficient than the x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Companies like Amazon have even started making their in-house server chips based on ARM's licensable CPU designs.

There's no timeline for when Qualcomm's server chips will be available, but Qualcomm's current schedule has Nuvia technology showing up in laptops in "late 2023."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

By combining seawater data taken from clam shells and thousands of climate simulations, researchers found that 900 years of cooling in the Gulf of Maine were suddenly reversed in the late 1800s:

The "recent, rapid ocean warming" was "likely due to increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and changes in western North Atlantic circulation," the researchers wrote in a paper just published by the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment.

[...] The researchers also wrote that because of projected increases in greenhouse gas concentrations, plus projected weakening of the ocean currents that continually mix warm surface water and cooler, deeper water, "this warming trend in the Gulf of Maine is likely to continue, leading to continued and potentially worsening ecologically and economically devastating temperature increases in the region in the future."

[...] "The Gulf of Maine has naturally been cooling for the last 1,000 years, and now the reverse is happening," Wanamaker said. "It took 900 years to cool 2 degrees Celsius and 100 years to warm 2 degrees Celsius."

The research team traces the change back to the spread of industrialization, writing that cooling caused by the ash and gases produced by volcanic activity and ocean dynamics quickly reversed as machines, manufacturing and industry developed in the 1800s.

[...] "It is clear that the mid- to late-1800s were a time of dramatic change in the North Atlantic, as documented both in the Gulf of Maine geochemical records presented and discussed in this study, as well as other records of temperature and ocean circulation changes throughout the North Atlantic," the researchers wrote.

Journal Reference:
N.M. Whitney, A.D. Wanamaker, C.C. Ummenhofer, et al. Rapid 20th century warming reverses 900-year cooling in the Gulf of Maine [open]. Commun Earth Environ 3, 179 (2022). 10.1038/s43247-022-00504-8

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Australian Army reveals electric Bushmaster development - Asian Military Review:

The Australian Army has unveiled a prototype of a new hybrid electric-powered Bushmaster 4×4 protected mobility vehicle at the Chief of Army Symposium 2022 that was from 9-11 August in Adelaide.

The symposium includes the Army Innovation Day, Army Future Forum, Army Robotics Exposition and the Army Quantum Technology Challenge, bringing together industry, academia and the Australian Defence Force (ADF).

[...] the prototype vehicle, called the electric Protected Military Vehicle (ePMV), is a key part of the Australian Army's modernisation effort.

The prototype ePMV features a series hybrid propulsion system that comprises a diesel engine that produces up to 400 kW of continuous power for vehicle electronics and mission systems, as well as charge batteries that enable the vehicle to operate for up to 24-36 hours on 'silent watch' or travel distances of 200-300 km. In contrast, a conventionally powered Bushmaster vehicle offers an unrefuelled range of up to 800 km.

Original Submission