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upstart writes:

Driving in EV-Friendly Norway is Like Looking Into Our Future:

Traveling through Scandinavia feels like visiting the future in a lot of ways. OK, it's a future with a lot more open space and a lot less cultural diversity than what the real future holds, but a spin through Norway is a pretty interesting trip just the same. Wandering around Oslo, you're struck by stunning architecture at every turn and statues that not only highlight public squares but sprout from the very sea in unexpected spots.

But, being a transportation nerd, it was the means of mobility that really struck me. For one thing, bikes and cars and scooters all seem to coexist in Oslo more peacefully than just about anywhere else on the planet. Buses are easy to ride, with tickets purchased from your phone in an instant avoiding any awkward exchanges with drivers.

And then there are the EVs. So. Many. EVs. An amazing number of the things festoon the roads in Norway, enough to constantly surprise and delight me, despite this being my third trip to the city. Even in just the past few years, battery-powered motoring in Norway has really gone mainstream.

How mainstream? In March this year, 16,238 passenger cars were registered in Norway. Of those, 13,983 were battery-electric vehicles. That's an amazing 86% of all cars registered that month. Meanwhile in the US, according to the Argonne National Laboratory, sales of light-duty vehicles with plugs (including hybrids) made up just 5.85% of the market in March. That was nearly a 40% increase over the previous year, but still floundering in the single digits.

Why the disparity? Is Norway just a utopia of forward-thinking EV zealots? Not exactly. Where state and federal governments in the US have engaged in a haphazard collection of half-assed, confusing incentives to spur EV adoption, scattering a middling collection of carrots here and there over the years, the Norwegian government has instead chosen the biggest of sticks: taxes. Want to buy a gas-powered machine? Be prepared for a painful whack.

upstart writes:

UK police accused of uploading misleading Waze reports to encourage safer driving:

The Surrey police force in the UK has found itself at the center of a controversy after one of its official Twitter accounts shared how some officers use Waze to encourage drivers to slow down. In a series of tweets spotted by The Guardian, the department's Roads Policing unit revealed it uses the crowdsourced navigation app to share misleading information.

"We definitely don't drop police markers on Waze at random points on our patrol, nope - never," the unit said, adding a winking emoji for good measure. "An easy way to get drivers to slow down on our roads – thanks Waze." As you can probably guess, the tweet wasn't received warmly, with some people accusing Surrey Police of operating "phantom units" and violating the UK's Computer Misuse Act. Others didn't go so far, but many pointed out that Waze has a policy against repeatedly posting false reports.

"Technically not false though. We are there at that very specific point in time," the traffic unit said in response to one accusation of sharing misleading information – this time using a smirking emoji to punctuate its point. "Nowhere on Waze does it say the patrol has to be stationary," it added.

[...] Surrey Police issued the following statement:

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A spacecraft attitude kinematics model, attitude measurement model, and filter algorithm are three important parts in spacecraft attitude determination, and a high-precision filtering algorithm is the key to attitude determination. The classical sigma-point Kalman filter (SPKF) is widely used in a spacecraft state estimation area with the Gaussian white noise hypothesis.

Although the SPKF algorithm performs well in ideal Gaussian white noise, the actual operating conditions of the spacecraft in orbit are complicated. Space environmental interference, solar panel jitter, and flicker noise will make the noise no longer meet the Gaussian distribution and present a heavy-tailed non-Gaussian situation, where the classical SPKF filtering method is no longer applicable, and there will be obvious accuracy degradation or even filtering divergence.

In a research paper recently published in Space: Science & Technology, a joint team from the Army Engineering University of PLA and Chinese Academy of Military Science, proposed a robust Centered Error Entropy Unscented Kalman Filter (CEEUKF) algorithm by combining the deterministic sampling criterion with the centered error entropy criterion.

takyon writes:

AMD Details Ryzen 7000 Launch: Ryzen 7950X and More, Coming Sept. 27th

Driving AMD's gains in this newest generation of desktop CPUs is a combination of architectural improvements underpinning the Zen 4 architecture, as well as moving production of the CPU core chiplets to TSMC's leading-edge 5nm process. The combination of which will allow AMD to deliver what they are saying is now a 13% increase in IPC over their Zen 3 architecture – up from an 11% claim as of Computex – as well as a sizable increase in CPU clockspeeds. The top-end Ryzen 9 7950X will have a maximum turbo clockspeed of 5.7GHz, 800MHz (16%) higher than the equivalent Ryzen 9 5950X. As a result, AMD expects to deliver a 29% generational increase in single-threaded performance, and even more in multi-threaded workloads.

Launching in conjunction with the new Ryzen 7000 series chips will be AMD's AM5 platform, which will be cornerstone of AMD's consumer desktop platform through at least 2025. AM5 introduces DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 support for AMD's chips, as well as a new LGA socket. 4 chipsets are planned thus far – X670 Extreme, X670, B650 Extreme, and B650 – with X670 series boards available for the September launch, and B650 series boards set to follow in October.

While top TDPs have increased to 170W (230W socket power delivery) for the 7950X and 7900X, power efficiency is up. AMD's CTO Mark Papermaster called the 65W TDP a "sweet spot" for TSMC's N5 node, claiming that the 7950X is 74% faster than the 5950X when limited to 65W. This will become relevant to the performance of AMD's "Dragon Range" mobile CPUs, which will simply drop repackaged Zen 4 desktop CPUs with up to 16 cores into high-end laptops.

AVX-512 instruction set support has been added. Frequency drops seen on previous Intel implementations may be avoided due to the design, which "double-pumps" 256-bit instructions. AMD claimed up to a 150% performance increase over Ryzen 5000 (using INT8 VNNI).

The new Socket AM5 is planned to last through at least 2025, with Zen 5 CPUs arriving sometime in 2024. X670 and B650 motherboards use the same chipset, but X670 uses two of them to achieve better signal integrity. The X670E and B650E "Extreme" motherboards will guarantee support for both PCIe 5.0 graphics cards and storage. PCIe 5.0 SSDs will become available in November 2022. AMD believes that DDR5-6000 is the "sweet spot" memory configuration for Ryzen 7000.

All of the Ryzen 7000 desktop CPUs will include RDNA2 integrated graphics with 2 compute units, 128 stream processors (compare to the 6 or 12 CUs found in Rembrandt APUs). The iGPU is located inside the "6nm" I/O die, and supports up to four display outputs, including HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 2.0.

Ryzen 7000 models with added 3D V-Cache are rumored to launch in early 2023.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

FCC SpaceX decision upheld on lower altitude Starlink sats:

Judges in the US have upheld the FCC's decision to allow SpaceX Starlink satellites to fly at a lower altitude.

SpaceX was last year given permission to launch more than 2,000 of its broadband-beaming satellites at 540 to 570 km above Earth instead of its usual 1,100 to 1,300 km range. It was hoped that flying the hardware lower would boost internet service to Alaska and other remote areas, and help prevent the build up of space junk and other objects in a relatively narrow band of low Earth orbit.

But competing satellite providers, such as Viasat, Amazon, and Dish, weren't happy. In an attempt to overturn the FCC's decision, Viasat, an environmental org calling itself The Balance Group, and Dish sued the communications regulator, arguing officials failed to consider, among other things, the potential environmental effects. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) federal agencies are required to assess the environmental impact of their decisions, such as constructing buildings or military bases.

upstart writes:

Snapdragon giant was accused of bribing Apple not to use rival modems:

The European Commission has reportedly called it quits in its bid to fine Qualcomm for alleged anti-competitive payments to Apple.

Reuters reports antitrust regulators have signaled they will not appeal a June court ruling nixing a nearly $1 billion fine against the US system-on-chip designer, which was accused of breaking Europe's competition laws.

According to "people familiar with the matter," it appears regulators have determined it would be too difficult to convince Europe's top court to overturn the earlier decision to cancel the fine.

[...] The decision marks the European Commission's latest defeat. In January the EU's top court overturned a $1.2 billion fine leveled against Intel for similar alleged behavior. In that case, regulators accused the x86 titan of making payments to German electronics retailer Media Saturn Holding not to sell computers using competitors' components.

EU regulators now face paying Intel $623.5 million (€593 million) in damages. In June, the chipmaker filed a complaint with the EU General Court seeking "payment of compensation and consequential interest for the damage sustained because of the European Commission's refusal to pay Intel default interest."

The commission's string of bad luck may not be over, either. Early next month, the EU General Court is expected to rule on Google's challenge to a €4.34 billion fine for using its Android operating system to push out competitors.

Are the EU regulators over-zealous or do they keep getting out-lawyered?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

A Remote survey found that the most in-demand digital skills are in social media, digital marketing and software development:

In a survey of more than 500 tech workers and employers, 37pc said software developer will be the most important technology job in the future.

They were polled by Remote, a US-based company that helps organisations hire remote workers. It asked more than 500 employers and employees who work in tech for their thoughts on in-demand skills for the future.

After software developer, the jobs deemed most important for the future were software engineer, workplace manager, digital workplace programme director, head of automation and machine learning engineer.

The respondents were also asked for their views on the most in-demand skills for tech workers. The top five in-demand skills singled out by those surveyed were social media skills, digital marketing, software development, programming, web and app development and software engineering.

[...] In June of this year, the Code Institute's digital content and production manager, Daragh Ó Tuama, wrote a piece for SiliconRepublic.com that outlined nine reasons to become a software developer.

From job satisfaction to great career progression opportunities and high salaries, it's a very good option for anyone who is considering their future at the moment.

Do our tech workers agree? (And when did "pc" start getting used for "percent"? Is "pct" too old fashioned now?)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Astra said that Airbus OneWeb Satellites will acquire an unspecified number of its Astra Spacecraft Engines, an electric propulsion system, for Arrow satellites. Astra did not disclose or answer questions about the number of thrusters ordered or the value or duration of the deal.

The Astra Spacecraft Engine is an electric thruster that uses xenon or krypton as propellants. Astra offers two versions of the thruster, one that requires 400 watts of power and produces up to 300 kilonewton-seconds of total impulse, and another that uses 1,450 watts of power and produces up to 1.5 meganewton-seconds of total impulse.

[...] Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said in the earnings call that customers of the Astra Spacecraft Engine are attracted by features such as a higher specific impulse, a measure of engine efficiency, as well as experience of having operated “hundreds of times” in space to date. “It’s very cost competitive, and as we work with our customers, we’re trying to strike that balance of offering a product that is high performance and lower cost,” he said.

In that same earnings call, Astra announced it was discontinuing its existing launch vehicle, the Rocket 3.3, after its most recent launch failure in June. The company is now focusing on a larger vehicle, Rocket 4, but test flights of that vehicle won’t begin until some time in 2023, and executives cautioned the new vehicle might not be ready for commercial, revenue-generating launches before the end of 2023.

In the near term, Astra expects its revenue to be dominated by sales of its Astra Spacecraft Engine. “If you look at 2023, what we’re looking at in terms of revenue forecasts will largely be spacecraft engines,” Kemp said.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/26/health/polypill-lower-cardiovascular-events-wellness/index.html

Older heart disease patients who took a combination "polypill" made up of three different medications had a lower risk of major cardiovascular events, according to a new study published Friday in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Spain.

Study authors led by Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart in New York City and general director of the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research, looked at 2,499 patients in seven European countries who had a history of type 1 myocardial infarction in the past six months and were either over the age of 75 or a minimum age of 65 with at least one risk factor, such as diabetes or mild or moderate kidney dysfunction.

Half the patients were given the polypill that contained aspirin, ramipril and atorvastatin, while others received the usual standard of care. Patients were followed for a median of three years.

The researchers found 48 cardiovascular deaths in the polypill group and 71 in the usual-care group, meaning patients who took the polypill had a relative risk reduction of 33% for cardiovascular death. The polypill was also favorable in other measures studied in the trial, such as stroke or myocardial infarction.

[...] There are some limitations to the research, including that the trial was not performed in a blinded manner and all patients were enrolled before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Journal Reference:
Jose M. Castellano, Stuart J. Pocock, Deepak L. Bhatt, et al., Polypill Strategy in Secondary Cardiovascular Prevention, NEJM, 2022. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2208275

Original Submission

upstart writes:

After finding more than 20,000 undeclared pools, French authorities plan to roll the system out nationwide and could use it to spot other property enhancements:

The power of artificial intelligence is now being used to crack down on unpaid taxes in France.

[...] Pools can boost the value of a property and must be declared under French law as they can lead to higher property taxes. French news publication The Connexion said a swimming pool can increase a property tax bill by up to 30pc.

French authorities began an experiment last year using an AI system developed by Google and tech services firm Capgemini, according to local media reports. This AI is able to identify pools from aerial images and compare the information with land registry databases.

Nine French departments were able to uncover more than 20,000 undeclared swimming pools using this technology.

[...] Following the success of the trial, France's tax office now plans to extend this AI system nationwide and it could reap €40m in new taxes next year.

The scope of the software could also be expanded to spot other undeclared property enhancements such as annexes or extensions.

[...] AI is "without any doubt" the new fuel for the modern economy, according to John Clancy from Ireland's Enterprise Digital Advisory Forum, with the potential to disrupt and transform almost every industry and business sector.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Germany orders shutdown of digital ads to save gas:

Germany has ordered overnight shutdowns for non-essential digital signage, to save its reserves of natural gas for more important purposes.

Like many European nations, Germany relies on natural gas imported from Russia. And thanks to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, that gas is currently in short supply.

The European Union has therefore implemented an energy saving plan. One of Germany's tactics is requiring digital signage in shop windows and other non-essential locations to be turned off between 10:00PM and 6:00AM. Germany will also stop external lighting of some public buildings and implement many other power-saving measures.

[...] Further complicating matters is a requirement to turn off the screens altogether rather than leaving the displays blank.

Digital signage is seldom switched off, and retail staff will have to learn how to do that. Many digital signs also include a computer – some are Android machines, others use compute sticks, the Intel NUC and even the Raspberry Pi. Admins will therefore need to cope with extra reboots.

And then there's the matter of content updates, which are often scheduled overnight.

All of which adds up to a stressful moment for admins of digital signage, and not much time to get things right.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Employees Say 'Quiet Quitting' Is Just Setting Boundaries. Companies Fear Long-Term Effects:

Maggie Perkins, a Georgia-based teaching advocate, had been working as a teacher for nearly half a decade before she decided to "quiet quit" her job. The decision didn't mean she'd leave her position, but rather limit her work to her contract hours. Nothing more, nothing less.

"No matter how much I hustle as a teacher, there isn't a growth system or recognition incentive," Perkins told TIME. "If I didn't quiet quit my teaching job, I would burn out."

Perkins joins a larger online community of workers who have been sharing their experiences on TikTok, taking a "quiet quitting" mentality—the concept of no longer going above and beyond, and instead doing what their job description requires of them and only that.

The movement comes in the wake of a global pandemic that caused employees to reimagine what work could look like, considering the potentials of extending remote work, not working much on Fridays, or in some cases, amid the Great Resignation, not working at all. Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post and CEO at Thrive, wrote in a viral LinkedIn post, "Quiet quitting isn't just about quitting on a job, it's a step toward quitting on life."

As "quiet quitters" defend their choice to take a step back from work, company executives and workplace experts argue that although doing less might feel good in the short-term, it could harm your career—and your company—in the long run.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

If Heroku is so special, why is it dying?:

[Editors Comment: It seems it might be even more obscure that I thought it was. It is a container system similar to Kubernetes or Docker, but was around a while before them. JR]

With Heroku, there's always a "but." For 15 years, I've heard Heroku described as "magical," as the gold standard for developer experience, as the manna from heaven that the Israelites ate while wandering in the wilderness.

For all its impact, Heroku always seems bigger in its mythology than its reality. I don't mean to say that its impact hasn't been substantial in terms of other services and products it has inspired, but why is Kubernetes and not Heroku the increasingly default way to build and scale applications? Some suggest Heroku was simply ahead of its time. Maybe. Or maybe the price of that magical developer experience was too constrained to work in the modern messiness of enterprise computing.

Heroku is back in the news because it recently announced the elimination of its free tier. Why? As it turns out, it was simply too much work to keep up with the graft that followed a zero-cost tier: "Our product, engineering, and security teams are spending an extraordinary amount of effort to manage fraud and abuse of the Heroku free product plans," said Bob Wise, general manager of Heroku and executive vice president at Salesforce, which acquired Heroku in late 2010. Instead of playing Whac-A-Mole with crypto fraudsters, the company hopes to better invest in its customers—of which there probably aren't as many as there should be.

That sounds like criticism but isn't. Perhaps it's the crowd I follow, but I've never heard Heroku mentioned except to praise how it revolutionized deployment of applications. Prior to Heroku, it would take as long or longer to deploy an application as to build it. With Heroku, deployment was as easy as a Git push.

upstart writes:

FTC sues data broker that tracks locations of 125M phones per month:

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday sued a data broker for allegedly selling location data culled from hundreds of millions of phones that can be used to track the movements of people visiting abortion clinics, domestic abuse shelters, places of worship, and other sensitive places.

In a complaint, the agency said that Idaho-based Kochava has promoted its marketplace as providing "rich geo data spanning billions of devices globally." The data broker has also said it "delivers raw latitude/longitude data with volumes around 94B+ geo transactions per month, 125 million monthly active users, and 35 million daily active users, on average observing more than 90 daily transactions per device."

The FTC said Kochava amassed the data by tracking the Mobile Advertising ID, or MAID, from phones and selling the data through Amazon Web Services or other outlets without first anonymizing the data. Anyone who purchases the data can then use it to track the comings and goings of many phone owners. Many of the allegations are based on the agency's analysis of a data sample the company made available for free to promote sales of its data, which was available online with no restrictions on usage.

"In fact, in just the data Kochava made available in the Kochava Data Sample, it is possible to identify a mobile device that visited a women's reproductive health clinic and trace that mobile device to a single-family residence," the complaint alleged. "The data set also reveals that the same mobile device was at a particular location at least three evenings in the same week, suggesting the mobile device user's routine. The data may also be used to identify medical professionals who perform, or assist in the performance, of abortion services."

Mikhail Gorbachev, Who Ended the Cold War, Dies Aged 91 -Agencies

upstart writes:

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War, dies aged 91 -agencies:

Mikhail Gorbachev, who ended the Cold War without bloodshed but failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union, died on Tuesday at the age of 91, Russian news agencies cited hospital officials as saying.

Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.

When pro-democracy protests swept across the Soviet bloc nations of communist Eastern Europe in 1989, he refrained from using force - unlike previous Kremlin leaders who had sent tanks to crush uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

But the protests fuelled aspirations for autonomy in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union, which disintegrated over the next two years in chaotic fashion.

Gorbachev struggled in vain to prevent that collapse.

Russian Media: Ex-Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev Dead at 91

upstart writes:

Russian media: Ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev dead at 91:

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian news agencies are reporting that former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has died at 91. The Tass, RIA Novosti and Interfax agencies cited the Central Clinical Hospital.

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2