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upstart writes:

Mushrooms serve as 'main character' in most ecosystems:

A team of Western mycologists (fungi experts) spent the past two summers digging deep in Newfoundland dirt to investigate the might of mushrooms and found what lies beneath truly is 'the main character' in most terrestrial ecosystems.

Fungi, which produce mushrooms, are critically important in most earthbound ecosystems as they provide life-sustaining mineral nutrients to plants while decomposing their remains, and recycling both organic and inorganic byproducts throughout the biome as they grow and reproduce.

"A lot of ecologists are beginning to realize that mushrooms really run the world. We've quite naturally spent a lot of our time focusing on things above ground, things that we see like plants, animals, and birds," said Western biology professor Greg Thorn. "But in fact, the plants are very closely associated with fungi, and basically wouldn't be there (above ground) without them."

[...] Katarina Kukolj, a master's student in the Thorn lab, leads a study investigating the effects of the edible blewit mushroom (Lepista nuda) on the soil environments in coastal regions of Newfoundland, specifically in the community of Lumsden.

Building on Thorn's research, Kukolj wants to know how and why blewits basically 'attack' microfauna (microscopic animals and organisms) living in the soil and serving as nature's vacuum cleaner by eating bacteria, decomposing surplus nutrients, and producing new ones.

[...] Kukolj believes her research could also provide important supporting data for the use of blewits as a biopesticide in organic farming. Blewitt mushrooms would be an environmentally friendly alternative to some synthetic chemical pesticides. They're also non-toxic and there would be no leaching into the waterways.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Frogs once lived alongside dinosaurs. About 45 million years ago, the North Sea covered half of Germany. It's incredible to think these little creatures survived the dinosaurs' extinction. But a lower level mass death did take place in what is now called the Geiseltal region in central Germany and the cause has long remained a mystery.

Hundreds of frog fossils were found in a mass grave in Geiseltal's 45-million-year-old swampy coastlands, and their reason for being there has confounded scientists for decades. But my team's study found an explanation: they died from exhaustion while mating.

[...] Other scientists thought the Geiseltal frogs and toads died when lakes dried up and oxygen levels decreased rapidly. But our research showed this was unlikely as the frogs could have easily made their way to nearby water bodies. We also found evidence the frog carcasses floated in the water for some time before they sank to the lake bottom. So the lake didn't dry out.

Our comparisons of Geiseltal skeletons with modern frogs revealed most Geiseltal frogs were actually toads. Toads follow a land based lifestyle, except when they return to ponds to mate. They mated with numerous other toads during the very short mating season which, in some modern tropical species, lasts for just hours.

upstart writes:

The party is over for Nvidia as crypto and gaming GPU demand is down:

Nvidia on Wednesday announced its financial results for the second quarter of its fiscal year 2023. The results were a mixed bag as its client PC businesses suffered declines, but its automotive and data center businesses thrived.

Nvidia's gaming, professional graphics, mining, and OEM business segments were down significantly both sequentially and annually, which is why it had to warn investors that it expects slow sales of gaming and ProViz graphics products to persist for a while. Meanwhile, the company said that it plans to talk about its next-generation Ada Lovelace architecture next month but never revealed when actual GeForce RTX 40-series graphics boards will be available.

By contrast, Nvidia's data center and automotive hardware shipments were up significantly compared to the same quarter a year ago. They will be up again in Q3 FY2023 now that the company's Hopper H100 compute GPUs are in total production and ready to ship.

[...] During its second quarter of fiscal 2023, Nvidia encountered multiple challenges, including macroeconomic conditions (inflation and uncertainty among consumers), high inventory levels in the channel (as the company aggressively sold its graphics cards in prior quarters), softening demand from the end user (both because gamers are expecting Ada Lovelace to launch shortly and because of uncertainties), inventory corrections by partners, and lowering prices of graphics cards as a result of softening demand as well as increased supply by competition.

[...] It should be noted that Nvidia's gaming revenue in Q2 was still significantly higher when compared to $1.654 billion in the second quarter of the company's FY2021 (~calendar Q2 2020). It indicates that the chip designer benefited greatly from increased demand for discrete GPUs for gaming PCs, increased prices of standalone graphics cards, and the crypto mining craze.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/scientists-create-synthetic-embryo-from-stem-cells

Genetic engineering experts at the University of Cambridge have produced a "synthetic" mouse embryo without using egg or sperm cells.

The embryos produced using stem cells were able to start developing a heart, brain, and other organs for up to a week, according to a press release published by the university on Thursday.

"It's an absolutely fantastically complex stage of development, and it has extremely relevant meaning for the rest of our life," said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a Cambridge professor of mammalian development and stem cell biology, at a press conference announcing the findings.

[...] The researchers believe their findings will one day help explain why many human pregnancies fail early in development and may even inform future efforts to create lab-grown organs for transplantation.

To a certain extent, researchers have learned how to develop already created embryos in the lab, as well as how to create artificial but simplistic models of embryos or individual organs—advances that have helped overcome some of these obstacles.

However, this new study claimed to be one of the first successful attempts at creating a functional mouse embryo from scratch.

[...] The scientists created embryos by combining three different types of embryonic stem cells in the exact right combination and environment, allowing them to communicate with one another and mimicking what happens naturally during embryonic development.

The cells then began to form the fundamental structures of an embryo and progressed through the early stages of development, which included the formation of a yolk sac, brain, and beating heart. The embryos survived for up to eight and a half days.

Journal Reference:
Amadei, G., Handford, C.E., Qiu, C. et al. Synthetic embryos complete gastrulation to neurulation and organogenesis. Nature (2022). 10.1038/s41586-022-05246-3

Original Submission

upstart writes:

LastPass confirms attackers stole some source code:

LastPass is letting its users know that there was a recent security incident at the company where someone was able to access some source code for its password manager as well as proprietary technical information.

Earlier this week, LastPass started notifying its users of a "recent security incident" where an "unauthorized party" used a compromised developer account to access parts of its password manager's source code and "some proprietary LastPass technical information." In a letter to its users, the company's CEO Karim Toubba explains that its investigation hasn't turned up evidence that any user data or encrypted passwords were accessed.

Toubba continues on to explain that the company has "implemented additional enhanced security measures" after containing the breach, which it detected two weeks ago. The company wouldn't comment on how long the breach had been going on before it was detected.

As LastPass explains, at this point its users don't have to do anything — there's no reason for you to spend an afternoon changing your master password and doing a full security audit. LastPass, on the other hand, probably has its work cut out for it making sure that it doesn't have to make any changes now that an unauthorized party may have access to its source code.

To be clear, hackers having access to a program's source code doesn't immediately mean they can instantly pwn it, breaking through its defenses. Famously, Microsoft says it doesn't rely on its source code remaining private for security and says that people being able to read it shouldn't be a risk (which is a good thing because its source code leaks a lot). And while that should be the case for any company, especially ones whose entire deal is keeping your passwords safe, I'd probably want the company to be poring over its code just to make sure there aren't any subtle vulnerabilities that it missed if I were a LastPass customer.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

People with an obsessive urge to constantly check the news are more likely to suffer from stress, anxiety, as well as physical ill health:

During the last two years we have lived through a series of worrying global events, from the COVID pandemic to Russia invading Ukraine, large-scale protests, mass shootings and devastating wildfires. For many people, reading bad news can make us feel temporarily powerless and distressed.

For others, being exposed to a 24-hour news cycle of continually evolving events can have serious impacts on mental and physical wellbeing – as these new findings, out today, show, with those who have a high-levels of news addiction reporting "significantly greater physical ill-being".

"Witnessing these events unfold in the news can bring about a constant state of high alert in some people, kicking their surveillance motives into overdrive and making the world seem like a dark and dangerous place," says Bryan McLaughlin, associate professor of advertising at the College of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University.

"For these individuals, a vicious cycle can develop in which, rather than tuning out, they become drawn further in, obsessing over the news and checking for updates around the clock to alleviate their emotional distress. But it doesn't help, and the more they check the news, the more it begins to interfere with other aspects of their lives."

[...] "In the case of problematic news consumption, research has shown that individuals may decide to stop, or at least dramatically reduce, their news consumption if they perceive it is having adverse effects on their mental health.

[...] "However, for certain types of people, the conflict and drama that characterize newsworthy stories not only grab their attention and draw them in, but also can lead to a maladaptive relationship with the news. Thus, the results of our study emphasise that the commercial pressures that news media face are not just harmful to the goal of maintaining a healthy democracy, they also may be harmful to individuals' health."

Journal Reference:
Bryan McLaughlin, Melissa R. Gotlieb & Devin J. Mills (2022) Caught in a Dangerous World: Problematic News Consumption and Its Relationship to Mental and Physical Ill-Being [open], Health Communication, DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2022.2106086

Original Submission

takyon writes:

StarFive recently announced an SBC using the StarFive JH7110 quad-core 64-bit RISC-V SoC. Now Pine64 is announcing their own version, the Star64:

Pine64 Star64 is an upcoming single board computer (SBC) powered by StarFive JH7110 quad-core 64-bit RISC-V processor equipped with an Imagination BXE-4-32 GPU, and in a form factor similar to the earlier Pine64 model A boards such as the Quartz64 Model A.

The Star64 SBC will be offered with either 4GB or 8GB of RAM, an HDMI 2.0 video output connector, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 module, USB 3.0 ports, a PCIe slot, and a GPIO header for expansion.

[...] Both Star64 and VisionFive 2 SBCs offer many of the same features, but the Pine64 board provides access to the PCIe interface via a PCIe x4 slot instead of an M.2 socket and is equipped with a wireless module for WiFi and Bluetooth that the VisionFive 2 board completely does without.

More information about the JH7110 is available:

It's actually an SoC with six RISC-V cores, of which four 64-bit RISC-V cores run the main OS, plus a 64-bit RISC-V monitoring core, and a 32-bit RISC-V real-time core. The AI accelerators found in the JH7100 (Neural Network Engine and NVDLA) appear to be gone for good, and there are two 1-lane PCIe 2.0 interfaces up to 5 Gbps each.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

FOSS developer Michael Stapelberg has started a four part blog post on Rsync and how it works. He wrote the i3 tiling window manager, among other projects, and is a former Debian developer. Now he has written about three scenarios for which he has come to appreciate Rsync, specifically in DokuWiki transfers, software deployment, and backups. Then he looks at at integrating it into various work flows, and then at what the software and protocol actually do. The fourth section is to be announced.

• Scenarios in which Rsync is useful
• Integration of Rsync into the work flow
• How Rsync works

Rsync is an algorithm and a utilty, both initially developed by Andrew Tridgell as part of his PhD dissertation work, and by Paul Mackerras. It is used for updating files on one machine so that they become identical to a file on another machine while at the same time transferring the minimal amount of data to effect the update, saving on time and bandwidth. Rsync is the underlying component in a great many backup utilities and routines. With the right settings it can even do incremental backups. Andrew is also well-known for having worked on Samba, and won in the EU against M$ in order to get the required interoperability specifications needed to share files using CIFS/SMB.

Previously:
(2014) Ask Soylent: Suggestions for Remote Backup
(2014) How Do You Sync Your Home Directory?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Linux 6.1 Will Make It A Bit Easier To Help Spot Faulty CPUs:

While mostly of benefit to server administrators with large fleets of hardware, Linux 6.1 aims to make it easier to help spot problematic CPUs/cores by reporting the likely socket and core when a segmentation fault occurs, which can help in spotting any trends if routinely finding the same CPU/core is causing problems.

Queued up now in TIP's x86/cpu branch for the Linux 6.1 merge window in October is a patch to print the likely CPU at segmentation fault time. Printing the likely CPU core and socket when a seg fault occurs can be beneficial if routinely finding seg faults happening on the same CPU package or particular core.

In a large enough fleet of computers, it is common to have a few bad CPUs. Those can often be identified by seeing that some commonly run kernel code, which runs fine everywhere else, keeps crashing on the same CPU core on one particular bad system.

However, the failure modes in CPUs that have gone bad over the years are often oddly specific, and the only bad behavior seen might be segfaults in programs like bash, python, or various system daemons that run fine everywhere else.

Add a printk() to show_signal_msg() to print the CPU, core, and socket at segfault time.

This is not perfect, since the task might get rescheduled on another CPU between when the fault hit, and when the message is printed, but in practice this has been good enough to help people identify several bad CPU cores.

This little helper to assist in spotting potentially faulty processors will be there for use starting on Linux 6.1 later this year.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica lawsuit alleging millions of users' data exposed:

Facebook has agreed to settle a four-year federal lawsuit seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access private user data, according to court filings.

The settlement – the terms of which have not been disclosed by Meta Platforms, the social media giant's parent company – brings closure to a long-running case alleging that Facebook violated consumer privacy laws by sharing millions of users' data with third parties, including the now-defunct British firm connected with Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

[...] The agreement was reached before a 20 September deadline for Meta CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to submit pre-trial depositions in the case.

Now-former COO Sheryl Sandberg, who announced she is leaving the company after 14 years earlier this year, also was likely to be deposed.

[...] The lawsuit asserted Facebook is both a "data broker and surveillance firm" as well as a social network.

A spokesperson for Facebook told The Independent that the company does not have a comment at this time.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Hiding chocolate stashes or Amazon purchases from a partner? 'Guilty' purchases may have benefits:

Do you have a secret stash of chocolates that you keep from your partner, or do you intentionally keep your spouse from knowing about something you bought on Amazon? New research indicates that small but commonly hidden actions such as these may be good for the relationship.

[...] "In our study, we found that 90% of people have recently kept everyday consumer behaviors a secret from a close other -- like a friend or spouse -- even though they also report that they don't think their partner would care if they knew about it," said Kelley Gullo Wight, an assistant professor of marketing at the Kelley School and one of two lead authors on the study. "Even though most of these secret acts are quite ordinary, they can still -- positively -- impact the relationship. The positive impact is an important piece."

Most previous research on secrets has focused on those that hide significant and negative information, such as trauma or extramarital affairs. That research has generally found negative outcomes of secrets.

[...] "One of my favorite findings is that partners often keep the same secrets from each other," said Brick, the study's co-lead author. "In one couple, both partners reported secretly eating meat when they were both supposed to be vegetarian."

Wight said their findings offer companies insights into ways to help consumers use their products in secret. For example, marketers should ask their consumers about when and from whom they use their products so they can better support the secret usage.

"We find that people generally keep consumption a secret from a specific person, not necessarily everyone, which means that encouraging secret consumption shouldn't inhibit other marketing strategies, such as word of mouth," Wight said.

Marketing research papers start with interesting observations on human behavior before revealing their evil underbelly when they point out how to manipulate people using that information.

Journal Reference:
Danielle J. Brick, Kelley Gullo Wight, and Gavan J. Fitzsimons, Secret consumer behaviors in close relationships, J Consumer Psych, 2022. DOI: 10.1002/jcpy.1315

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://torrentfreak.com/denuvo-promises-to-kill-switch-emulator-piracy-with-new-protection-220824/

Anti-piracy company Denuvo has announced a new product that aims to prevent pirated copies of Nintendo Switch games from being played on PC-based emulators. Denuvo says that 'Nintendo Switch Emulator Protection' will have no impact on the gaming experience and will ensure that anyone wishing to play a game will have to buy a legitimate copy.

DenuvoMost video gamers will be familiar with the concept of an end-of-level or end-of-game 'boss'. They take many forms but tend to present as an escalated challenge designed to prevent gamers from progressing any further.

[...] Providing there's no obvious reuse of copyrighted code or trademark abuse, emulation software is mostly immune to legal attack. Emulators that mimic gaming hardware are mostly legal to develop, legal to distribute, legal to own, and even legal to use.

In reality, most emulator gamers like to gloss over that last bit. In the time it takes the minority to shout "HOMEBREW", the rest will have downloaded several hundred MAME ROMs, a few Nintendo Switch games, and will be playing them on a PC.

Nintendo is concerned about all piracy, but emulator piracy is special in that gamers don't need to buy games, and they don't need to buy a console either. Denuvo announced today that it has a new product to bring this to an end.

[...] Denuvo says its solution integrates "seamlessly and automatically" and works by detecting differences in the way a game behaves compared to what it was designed for.

"In this way, our software can tell that your game has been tampered with – and will make it unplayable." Denuvo says its solution will stop Switch games from being pirated and help to secure income for developers. As for gamers, they will "simply have to pay" if they want in on the action.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Global hunt for dark matter arrives in Australia with completion of Stage 1 of Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory:

Located one kilometre underground in the Stawell Gold Mine, the first dark matter laboratory in the Southern Hemisphere is preparing to join the global quest to understand the nature of dark matter and unlock the secrets of our universe.

Officially unveiled today, the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) will be the new epicentre of dark matter research in Australia.

[...] With Stage 1 now complete, the lab is ready to host the experiment known as SABRE South to be installed over the coming months, which aims to directly detect dark matter.

SABRE South will run in conjunction with the complementary SABRE experiment taking place in Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy. These experiments are designed to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), one of the likely forms for dark matter particles.

[...] The Stawell laboratory will be managed by SUPL Ltd., which is co-owned by the University of Melbourne, ANSTO, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Adelaide.

Accompanying video

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Lateral flow assays (LFA) tests have become ubiquitous within the general public; they are the format for standard home pregnancy and COVID-19 tests, indicating a positive result with a colored line, and a negative result with no colored line. In their current iteration, these tests are largely qualitative and binary in their outputs.

[...] In a paper published Aug. 17 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, members of the lab of Professor Tim Swager, led by postdoc Jie Li and graduate student Weize Yuan, reveal the design for a new generation of LFA that uses conductivity (or resistivity) changes in an electronic polymer to create the response.

Electrical resistance (or conductance) is universal in electronic devices. It can be readily measured with great accuracy, and prior research has shown that the group's electronic LFAs have both intrinsic quantitative capabilities and ultra-high sensitivity. The approach of the MIT team generates base signals in which the resistance can change by 700,000 percent, and with these strong signals, can detect trace quantities of a target biomarker. The electronic-LFA uses a biological trigger employing the well-known enzyme glucose oxidase. It was shown to be able to monitor glucose, but this LFA is far more than a glucose meter.

[...] When this electronic LFA is integrated into a resonant radio frequency circuit, users can power and read the device with a conventional smartphone. As a result, the passive LFA-RFID devices can be used at home without a specialized reader. With this in mind, electronic LFA has enormous potential in home health care diagnostics and environmental monitoring.

Your smartphone will be able to read it, but I'm sure the information will need to go back to some company server before they will tell you what the measurements mean.

Journal Reference:
Jie Li et al, Wireless Lateral Flow Device for Biosensing, JACS (2022). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c06579

Original Submission

Four hours until liftoff!? NASA is scheduled to launch its first heavy-lift rocket since retiring the space shuttle in 2011.

At long last, the SLS rocket will soon launch. After a dozen years and more than $20 billion, the Space Launch System rocket has been cleared for launch by NASA's Flight Readiness Review process. This week I wrote a feature about the rocket's history, my history with it, and where I think it is taking the space program. In the end, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the launch. I most definitely want it to succeed, but I also cannot let go of the fact that its production was in some ways responsible for a lost decade of US space exploration.

So it's bad, but also it may be good ... Between the rocket, its ground systems, and the Orion spacecraft launching on top of the stack, NASA has spent tens of billions of dollars. But I would argue that the opportunity costs are higher. For a decade, Congress pushed NASA's exploration focus toward an Apollo-like program, with a massive launch vehicle that is utterly expended, using 1970s technology in its engines, tanks, and boosters. The good news is that, in building Congress' favorite rocket, NASA has recently been able to wrangle money from Congress for an actual deep space exploration program—Artemis. I'm not sure that happens without SLS.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has been busy. It has independently developing its own heavy-lift rocket called Starship. With a designed lift capacity of 100 metric tons to low-earth orbit AND reusability, too. First nearly round-the-earth flight is slated for later this year and to Mars in a "couple years". Was this worth the expense to NASA? Who will use it?

[Update 0755 UTC - JR] They are having a problem filling the hydrogen tanks but the countdown is continuing while they are trying to resolve the problem. Launch is expected at 0833 EDT.

[Update 1047 UTC - JR] Live stream of the action on youtube. Problems getting engine 3 to the correct temperature and this is currently being actioned using bleed hydrogen from the other engines through engine 3.

[Update 1244 UTC - t] Artemis I: NASA has missed the first launch window for its SLS rocket

The next launch window opens on 2 September, with another on 5 September. If the spacecraft has to be rolled back inside to fix the engine issue, it will likely be delayed beyond that.