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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The Chattanooga telecommunications company EPB is launching the first communitywide 25Gbps internet speed tier in the US.

[...] The 25,000Mbps plan, which features symmetrical download and upload speeds, is five times faster than AT&T's highly touted "hypergig" plan and Ziply Fiber's speediest tier. It's more than four times faster than the Gigabit Pro plan from Xfinity. 

Chattanooga might still be most familiar for some as the city name-checked in the popular 1941 Glenn Miller Orchestra song Chattanooga Choo Choo. But to observers in the tech industry, it's been known as "Gig City" for more than 10 years. It was an early adopter of Gig-speed internet, offering it communitywide back in 2010, and it was the first US city to have a residential, 10 gig plan, back in 2015.  

"We are once again breaking the typical approach for internet service providers by proactively upgrading to the latest technologies in anticipation of future needs," said EPB Board Chair Vicky Gregg in a press release. "Our goal is to enable new frontiers for technical innovation and job creation for our customers to the benefit of our whole community."

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upstart writes:

Nato investigates hacker sale of missile firm data:

NATO is assessing the impact of a data breach of classified military documents being sold by a hacker group online.

The data includes blueprints of weapons being used by NATO allies in the Ukraine conflict. Criminal hackers are selling the dossiers after stealing data linked to a major European weapons maker. MBDA Missile Systems admitted its data was among the stash but claimed none of the classified files belong to the firm.

The pan-European company, which is headquartered in France, said its information was hacked from a compromised external hard drive, adding that it was cooperating with authorities in Italy, where the data breach took place.

It is understood investigations are centred around one of MBDA's suppliers.

In a statement, a Nato spokesperson said: "We are assessing claims relating to data allegedly stolen from MBDA. We have no indication that any NATO network has been compromised."

Cyber criminals, operating on Russian and English forums, are selling 80GB of the stolen data for 15 Bitcoins (approximately £273,000) and claimed to have sold the stash to at least one unknown buyer so far.

In their advert for the stolen data, the hackers claimed to have "classified information about employees of companies that took part in the development of closed military projects" as well as "design documentation, drawings, presentations, video and photo materials, contract agreements and correspondence with other companies".

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upstart writes:

DuckDuckGo now offers anti-tracking email service to everyone:

DuckDuckGo's tracker-removing email service, which has been available in private beta for a year, is now open to anyone who uses a DuckDuckGo mobile app, browser extension, or Mac browser. It has also added a few more privacy tools.

The service provides you a duck.com email address, one intended to be given out for the kind of "Subscribe to our newsletter for 20 percent off" emails you know exist only to harvest data and target you for ads. Email sent to your duck.com address forwards to your chosen primary email—but with trackers removed.

Email Protection now also fixes up links, strips them of tracking modifiers, upgrades unencrypted HTTP URLs to HTTPS where possible, and, for the rare necessary reply, allows you to send directly from your duck address instead of exposing your primary email. During their closed beta, DuckDuckGo claims that 85 percent of the emails it processed contained hidden trackers.

[...] In my experience, using the company's apps, extensions, or browser isn't necessary to keep the email forwarding service running, but they allow you to autofill your duck address and create more individual throwaway email addresses, which is handy for email filtering.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The GPU shortage is over. The GPU surplus has arrived!:

How quickly things change: A year ago, it was nearly impossible to buy a GeForce GPU for its intended retail price. Now, the company has the opposite problem. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during the company's Q2 2023 earnings call yesterday that the company is dealing with "excess inventory" of RTX 3000-series GPUs ahead of its next-gen RTX 4000 series release later this year.

To deal with this, according to Huang, Nvidia will reduce the number of GPUs it sells to manufacturers of graphics cards and laptops so that those manufacturers can clear out their existing inventory. Huang also says Nvidia has "instituted programs to price position our current products to prepare for next-generation products." When translated from C-suite to English, this means the company will be cutting the prices of current-generation GPUs to make more room for next-generation ones. Those price cuts should theoretically be passed along to consumers somehow, though that will be up to Nvidia's partners.

[...] Nvidia announced earlier this month that it would be missing its quarterly projections by $1.4 billion, mainly due to decreased demand for its gaming GPUs. Huang said that "sell-through" of GPUs, or the number of cards being sold to users, had still "increased 70 percent since pre-COVID," though the company still expects year-over-year revenue from GPUs to decline next quarter.

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upstart writes:

Power shortages in Ireland threaten to scupper plans by cloud giants AWS, Equinix and Microsoft to expand their data center footprints:

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Equinix and Microsoft may be forced to halt new data center projects in Dublin due to the city's power constricts.

The Times (Via Datacenter Dynamics) reports that Amazon and Microsoft are looking at alternative locations outside Dublin after state-owned electricity operator, EiGrid, imposed a moratorium on new connections in the capital city. The companies had earmarked nearly €2bn for data center expansion in the region.

EirGrid last year warned Dublin faced rolling blackouts due to excess demand, primarily from existing and new major data centers run by cloud giants. Ireland's Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) in 2021 named data centers "the single largest homogenous demand driver" on the grid.

"EirGrid is now applying these criteria to all data center applicants, many of which have decided not to progress their developments," a spokesperson said.

According to The Times, Microsoft and Amazon had received permission to build new facilities but Amazon reportedly hasn't received a connection from EirGrid and was told it would not be eligible for one. Microsoft meanwhile is exploring locations in London, Frankfurt, and Madrid. Amazon is building a data center near London.

upstart writes:

James Webb Space Telescope makes first unequivocal detection of carbon dioxide in an exoplanet atmosphere:

For the first time, astronomers have found unambiguous evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system).

[...] Natalie Batalha, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, leads the team of astronomers that made the detection, using JWST to observe a Saturn-mass planet called WASP-39b which orbits very close to a sun-like star about 700 light-years from Earth.

"Previous observations of this planet with Hubble and Spitzer had given us tantalizing hints that carbon dioxide could be present," Batalha said. "The data from JWST showed an unequivocal carbon dioxide feature that was so prominent it was practically shouting at us."

Carbon dioxide is an important component of the atmospheres of planets in our solar system, found on rocky planets like Mars and Venus as well as gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. For exoplanet researchers, it is important both as a gas they are likely to be able to detect on small rocky planets and as an indicator of the overall abundance of heavy elements in the atmospheres of giant planets.

"Carbon dioxide is actually a very sensitive measuring stick—the best one we have—for heavy elements in giant planet atmospheres, so the fact that we can see it so clearly is really great," said coauthor Jonathan Fortney, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC and director of the Other Worlds Laboratory.

takyon writes:

Intel Kicks Off Fab Co-Investment Program with Brookfield: New Fabs to be Jointly Owned

Intel this week introduced its new Semiconductor Co-Investment Program (SCIP) under which it will build new manufacturing facilities in collaboration with investment partners – a sharp departure from the company's traditional stance of wholly owning its logic fabs. As part of its SCIP initiative, Intel has already signed a deal with Brookfield Asset Management, which will provide Intel about $15 billion to build its fab new fab in Arizona in exchange for a 49% stake in the project. Furthermore, similar co-investment models are set to be used for other fabs in the future.

[...] Under the terms of the deal, the two companies will co-invest $30 billion in the ongoing expansion of the site [in Arizona] with Intel financing 51% and Brookfield backing 49% of the total project cost. Previously Intel planned to invest $20 billion in its Fab 52 and Fab 62, but together with Brookfield the sum has increased to $30 billion. In addition to getting access to additional funding, Intel could also take advantage of Brookfield's experience in developing infrastructure assets.

By working together with Brookfield, Intel will get $15 billion in free cash flow and will be able to invest more into its new fabs without raising new debt. Also, this will allow Intel to invest more in other projects while "continuing to fund a healthy and growing dividend." Meanwhile, the $15 billion benefit is "expected to be accretive to Intel's earnings per share during the construction and ramp phase."

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A recent report by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more than 80 percent of urine samples from children and adults in the U.S. contained the herbicide glyphosate. A study by Florida Atlantic University and Nova Southeastern University takes this research one step further and is the first to link the use of the herbicide Roundup, a widely used weed killer, to convulsions in animals.

Glyphosate, the weed killer component in Roundup, is the world's most commonly used herbicide by volume and by land-area treated. Glyphosate-resistant crops account for almost 80 percent of transgenic crop cultivated land, which has resulted in an estimated 6.1 billion kilos of glyphosate sprayed across the world from 2005 to 2014. Roundup is used at both industrial and consumer levels, and its use is projected to dramatically increase over the coming years. A major question, yet to be fully understood, is the potential impact of glyphosate on the nervous system.

[...] Results, published in Scientific Reports, showed that glyphosate and Roundup increased seizure-like behavior in soil-dwelling roundworms and provides significant evidence that glyphosate targets GABA-A receptors. These communication points are essential for locomotion and are heavily involved in regulating sleep and mood in humans. What truly sets this research apart is that it was done at significantly less levels than recommended by the EPA and those used in past studies.

"The concentration listed for best results on the Roundup Super Concentrate label is 0.98 percent glyphosate, which is about 5 tablespoons of Roundup in 1 gallon of water," said Naraine. "A significant finding from our study reveals that just 0.002 percent glyphosate, a difference of about 300 times less herbicide than the lowest concentration recommended for consumer use, had concerning effects on the nervous system."

upstart writes:

Former UK Supreme Court Judge Calls Out Online Safety Bill As Harmful By Itself:

We have discussed at great lengths the many problems of the UK's Online Safety Bill, in particular how it will be a disaster for the open internet. Unfortunately, it appears that important politicians seem to think that the Online Safety Bill will be a sort of magic wand that will make the "bad stuff" online disappear automatically (it won't).

It appears that more people — and prominent ones at that — are now speaking out against the bill. Former UK Supreme Court judge, Jonathan Sumption, has published a piece in the Spectator, the old school UK political commentary magazine that is generally seen as quite conservative. Sumption warns that the Online Harms Bill will, itself, be quite harmful.

The real vice of the bill is that its provisions are not limited to material capable of being defined and identified. It creates a new category of speech which is legal but 'harmful'. The range of material covered is almost infinite, the only limitation being that it must be liable to cause 'harm' to some people. Unfortunately, that is not much of a limitation. Harm is defined in the bill in circular language of stratospheric vagueness. It means any 'physical or psychological harm'. As if that were not general enough, 'harm' also extends to anything that may increase the likelihood of someone acting in a way that is harmful to themselves, either because they have encountered it on the internet or because someone has told them about it.

This test is almost entirely subjective. Many things which are harmless to the overwhelming majority of users may be harmful to sufficiently sensitive, fearful or vulnerable minorities, or may be presented as such by manipulative pressure groups. At a time when even universities are warning adult students against exposure to material such as Chaucer with his rumbustious references to sex, or historical or literary material dealing with slavery or other forms of cruelty, the harmful propensity of any material whatever is a matter of opinion. It will vary from one internet user to the next.

upstart writes:

Top Programming Languages 2022:

Python remains on top but is closely followed by C. Indeed, the combined popularity of C and the big C-like languages—C++ and C#—would outrank Python by some margin. Java also remains popular, as does Javascript, the latter buoyed by the ever-increasing complexity of websites and in-browser tools (although it's worth noting that in some quarters, the cool thing is now deliberately stripped-down static sites built with just HTML and simple CSS).

But among these stalwarts is the rising popularity of SQL. In fact, it's at No. 1 in our Jobs ranking, which looks solely at metrics from the IEEE Job Site and CareerBuilder. Having looked through literally hundreds and hundreds of job listings in the course of compiling these rankings for you, dear reader, I can say that the strength of the SQL signal is not because there are a lot of employers looking for just SQL coders, in the way that they advertise for Java experts or C++ developers. They want a given language plus SQL. And lots of them want that "plus SQL."

It may not be the most glamorous language...but some experience with SQL is a valuable arrow to have in your quiver.

This is likely because so many applications today involve a front-end or middleware layer talking to a back-end database, often over a network to eliminate local resource constraints. Why reinvent the wheel and try to hack your own database and accompanying network interface protocol when so many SQL implementations are available? Chances are there's probably already one that fits your use case. And even when a networked back end isn't practical, embedded and single-board computers can be found with enough oomph to run a SQL database locally.

("although it's worth noting that in some quarters, the cool thing is now deliberately stripped-down static sites built with just HTML and simple CSS") - Hey, so now we are cool? [JR]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2335230-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-linked-to-changes-in-dolphin-gene-activity

Dolphins living off the coast of Louisiana during and after the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 have genetic changes that could serve as a "canary in the coal mine" for future disease, according to researchers who analysed the animals' blood samples.

"[Gene expression] is a very, very sensitive indicator that can let us know something’s going wrong long before we see illness or deaths in the population," says Jeanine Morey at GEL Laboratories in South Carolina [...].

The largest marine petroleum spill, the Deepwater Horizon disaster churned around 800 million litres of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico after an oil rig sank in April 2010. The impacts on wildlife were staggering, with fish, birds and marine animals dying in huge numbers. But the long-term consequences of the spill on wildlife are less understood, which led Morey to investigate how common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were faring.

She and her team analysed the health records and blood samples of 71 wild dolphins captured and released between 2013 and 2018. During hands-on exams, biologists assessed each animal’s physical health, including their heart and lung function, and performed ultrasounds on pregnant females. The researchers lacked data on dolphins before the spill, so they compared more than 11,000 genes of individuals living in oil-impacted Barataria Bay, Louisiana, with those from dolphins living in Sarasota Bay, Florida, which was spared from the spill. Some of the Louisiana dolphins lived through the disaster, while others were born after.

hubie writes:

A team of Université de Montréal astronomers have discovered an exoplanet that could be completely covered in water:

An international team of researchers led by Charles Cadieux, a Ph.D. student at the Université de Montréal and member of the Institute for Research on Exoplanets (iREx), has announced the discovery of TOI-1452 b, an exoplanet orbiting one of two small stars in a binary system located in the Draco constellation about 100 light-years from Earth.

The exoplanet is slightly greater in size and mass than Earth and is located at a distance from its star where its temperature would be neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on its surface. The astronomers believe it could be an "ocean planet," a planet completely covered by a thick layer of water, similar to some of Jupiter's and Saturn's moons.

[...] The exoplanet TOI-1452 b is probably rocky like Earth, but its radius, mass, and density suggest a world very different from our own. Earth is essentially a very dry planet; even though we sometimes call it the Blue Planet because about 70% of its surface is covered by ocean, water actually only makes up a negligible fraction of its mass — less than 1%.

[...] "TOI-1452 b is one of the best candidates for an ocean planet that we have found to date," said Cadieux. "Its radius and mass suggest a much lower density than what one would expect for a planet that is basically made up of metal and rock, like Earth."

[...] An exoplanet such as TOI-1452 b is a perfect candidate for further observation with the James Webb Space Telescope, or Webb for short. It is one of the few known temperate planets that exhibit characteristics consistent with an ocean planet. It is close enough to Earth that researchers can hope to study its atmosphere and test this hypothesis. And, in a stroke of good fortune, it is located in a region of the sky that the telescope can observe year round.

Journal Reference:
Charles Cadieux, René Doyon, Mykhaylo Plotnykov, et al. TOI-1452 b: SPIRou and TESS Reveal a Super-Earth in a Temperate Orbit Transiting an M4 Dwarf [open], AstronJ, 164, 2022. DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ac7cea

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/08/twitter-whistleblower-claims-musk-was-right-about-bots-ftc-reviewing-report/

The pressure on Twitter to talk publicly about how it monitors and removes spam accounts continues to mount.

Reports from CNN and The Washington Post reveal an 84-page whistleblower complaint alleging that Twitter isn't motivated to track the true number of spam accounts and hid security vulnerabilities from federal regulators.

The complaint comes from Twitter's former security chief, Peiter Zatko. Zatko is a well-known ethical hacker with the alias "Mudge." He told the Post that he "felt ethically bound" to report his serious concerns to government agencies. He alleges that he was fired for pushing disinclined Twitter executives to address major security problems—which his complaint suggests "pose a threat" to Twitter "users' personal information, to company shareholders, to national security, and to democracy."

Zatko alleges that Twitter execs were more invested in covering up those vulnerabilities, including cherry-picking and misrepresenting data on spam accounts and security threats to regulators and Twitter's board members.

Previously:
Judge Orders Twitter to Give Elon Musk Former Executive's Documents
Elon Musk Pulls Deal to Buy Twitter
Twitter Reportedly Will Give Musk the Full "Firehose" of User Data
Elon Musk Accuses Twitter of Thwarting His Due Diligence, Threatens to Walk Out of Deal
Twitter Users React to Elon Musk Putting Buyout Deal 'on Hold'
Musk Buying Twitter Is Not About Freedom of Speech
After Musk's Twitter Takeover, an Open-Source Alternative is 'Exploding'
Elon Musk has just bought Twitter
Elon Musk Isn't Joining Twitter's Board of Directors After All
Elon Musk Will Join Twitter's Board of Directors

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Waste from vegetable oil manufacturing could cheaply and effectively remove toxic heavy metals from contaminated water:

Using leftovers from sunflower and peanut oil manufacturing, a team of Singaporean and Swiss researchers have created a membrane that can effectively filter heavy metal ions from contaminated water, purifying it to international safety standards in a simple, cheap, gravity-based process needing little to no electricity.

[...] When oily seed crops or oilseeds are processed into edible oils, what remains is oilseed meal; a protein-rich by-product often thrown away or fed to animals. However, the team found that proteins extracted from oilseed meal could be shaped into amyloid fibrils, which are nanometre-sized ropes of tightly-wound protein molecules.

Amyloid fibrils have an unusually strong ability to adsorb—that is, to attract and trap—heavy metals and radioactive substances, thanks to amino acid bonds that sandwich such particles while letting water through, Miserez explained.

[...] The team found around 160 g of usable protein could be extracted from a kilo of oilseed meals. To filter an Olympic-sized swimming pool of water contaminated with 400 parts per billion (ppb) of lead—40 times the safety threshold for drinking water set by the World Health Organization—would take just 16 kg of sunflower seed protein, they estimated.

"Our protein-based membranes are created through a green and sustainable process, and require little to no power to run, making them viable for use throughout the world and especially in less developed countries," said Miserez. "Our work puts heavy metal where it belongs—as a music genre and not a pollutant in drinking water."

Europe needs this quick!

Journal Reference:
Wei LongSoon, Mohammad Peydayesh, Raffaele Mezzenga, and Ali Miserezad, Plant-based amyloids from food waste for removal of heavy metals from contaminated water [open], Chemical Engineering Journal, 445, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2022.136513

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Neolithic people sprinkled the crystals over burials:

Hundreds of fragments of a rare transparent type of quartz called "rock crystal" suggest Neolithic people used the mineral to decorate graves and other structures at a ceremonial site in western England, archaeologists say.

The rock crystals were likely brought to the site from a source more than 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, over mountainous terrain, and the crystals appear to have been carefully broken into much smaller pieces, possibly during a community gathering to watch the working of what must have seemed like a magical material.

"You can think of it as a really special event," Nick Overton, an archaeologist at The University of Manchester in England, told Live Science. "It feels like they're putting a lot of emphasis on the practice of working [the crystal] ... people would have remembered it as being distinctive and different."

Overton is the lead author of a study published in July in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal that describes the discovery of more than 300 of these quartz crystal fragments at a 6,000-year-old ceremonial site at Dorstone Hill in western England, about a mile (1.6 km) south of the monument known as Arthur's Stone. As well as being almost as transparent as water, several of the crystal fragments are prismatic, splitting white light into a visible rainbow spectrum.