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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:48 | Votes:107

posted by hubie on Thursday September 29 2022, @11:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the hemi-powered-drones-scream-down-the-boulevard dept.

Wasp-like technique could be used to 3D-print structures:

Bees and wasps, which build structures from mashed-up regurgitated wood fiber, provided the inspiration to researchers at London Imperial College and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories of Materials Science and Technology. They have developed a new manufacturing process using a group of untethered aerial robots to collectively and autonomously construct 3D structures under human supervision.

Known collectively as Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial-AM), drones are divided into machines that scan a structure or lay of the land to help figure out a plan (ScanDrones) and those that perform the 3D printing, dubbed BuilDrones. The latter are fitted with a nozzle that moves to account for volatility in the drone's flight position.

Together, the drone teams work cooperatively from a single blueprint, adapting their techniques as they go, according to a paper published in the journal Nature this week. The drones are fully autonomous while flying but are monitored by a human controller who checks progress and intervenes if necessary, based on the information provided by the drones, the researchers said.

Lead author professor Mirko Kovac, director of Imperial's Department of Aeronautics and Empa's Materials and Technology Center of Robotics, said: "We've proved that drones can work autonomously and in tandem to construct and repair buildings, at least in the lab. Our solution is scalable and could help us to construct and repair buildings in difficult-to-reach areas in the future."

[...] "We believe our fleet of drones could help reduce the costs and risks of construction in the future, compared to traditional manual methods," Kovac said.

Journal Reference:
Zhang, K., Chermprayong, P., Xiao, F. et al. Aerial additive manufacturing with multiple autonomous robots. Nature 609, 709–717 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04988-4


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2022, @08:44PM   Printer-friendly

U.S. Copyright Groups Are Concerned About Russia's Handling of Online Piracy

With its invasion of Ukraine, Russia ignited a regional conflict with global repercussions. Thousands of lives have been lost and many more ruined. In response, many U.S. entertainment industry companies took a stand by ceasing their Russian operations. Through the IIPA, many of the same companies now want to urge Russia to keep online piracy in check.

[...] As we have documented previously, more than a hundred Russian movie theaters have started to show pirated movies in Russia in response to the sanctions. While clearly illegal, the chairman of the Russian Association of Cinema has sympathy for the plight of these struggling theater owners.

The Russian Government has also made matters worse for US copyright holders. A few months ago, it proposed a 'forced licensing' bill that would effectively legalize piracy of media produced by "unfriendly" states, including the US.

These developments are causing concern among organizations such as the IIPA, which counts the MPA, RIAA, and ESA among its members. The group recently shared its thoughts with the US Trade Representative for its annual review of Russia's World Trade Organization (WTO) obligations.

[...] "The harm caused by commercial-scale piracy in Russia cannot be adequately addressed with civil measures alone; rather, enhanced administrative actions and penalties and criminal remedies are needed," IIPA writes.

When push comes to shove, copyright infringement just doesn't matter.

IIPA = International Intellectual Property Alliance. Letter to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (PDF).

Previously: Russia Mulls Legalizing Software Piracy as It's Cut Off From Western Tech


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2022, @05:57PM   Printer-friendly

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Israeli company Eviation Aircraft successfully launched the Alice on Tuesday morning from Washington's Grant County International Airport. The zero-emission plane traveled at an altitude of 3,500 feet for its eight-minute inaugural flight.

"This is history," Gregory Davis, Eviation's president and CEO, told CNN Business."We have not seen the propulsion technology change on the aircraft since we went from the piston engine to the turbine engine. It was the 1950s that was the last time you saw an entirely new technology like this come together."

With battery technology similar to that of an electric car or a cell phone and 30 minutes of charging, the nine-passenger Alice will be able to fly for one hour, and about 440 nautical miles. The plane has a max cruise speed of 250 knots, or 287 miles per hour. For reference, a Boeing 737 has a max cruise speed of 588 miles per hour.

[...] "We've actually generated, frankly, terabytes of data with the data acquisition systems that we had on the aircraft, so we're going to take a couple of weeks actually and review it to see how the aircraft performs versus our models and our analysis," Davis said. "From there, we'll understand what we need to do next."

The company says it expects to be working on developing an FAA-certified aircraft through 2025, followed by a year or two of flight testing before it can deliver Alices to customers.

Three different versions of the Alice are in protoype stages: a "commuter" variant, an executive version, and one specialized for cargo. The commuter configuration holds nine passengers and two pilots, as well as 850 pounds of cargo. The executive design has six passenger seats for a more spacious flight, and the cargo plane holds 450 cubic feet of volume.

See also: Electric Planes Are Coming: Short-Hop Regional Flights Could be Running on Batteries in a Few Years


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2022, @03:13PM   Printer-friendly

Multiple sources report that Edward Snowden was granted Russian citizenship
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63036991.

I could not believe it so I went for the source
http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202209260013?index=3&rangeSize=1

Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked extensive US intelligence surveillance operations, has been granted Russian citizenship.

The decree was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

Mr Snowden, 39, has been living in exile in Russia since exposing the National Security Agency (NSA) programme affecting millions of Americans in 2013.

Mr Snowden, who faces espionage charges in the US, has made no public comments.

He is now eligible for the war draft. Actually, IT workers are not, but they have to be employed by qualified businesses.

The LA Times disagrees with those who say he can be drafted, and tells us:

Snowden, however, has never served in the Russian armed forces, so he is not eligible to be mobilized, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told the Interfax news agency. Having previous combat or military service experience has been considered the main criteria in the call-up.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2022, @12:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the free-tibet dept.

Radio Free Asia is reporting on a copyright hack used by a Japanese art platform, Pixiv, to clamp down on copyright violations in red China. Copyright infringers there had duplicated the whole site's content almost verbatim, translating tags and titles along the way, and then offering the ripped off content to people in red China in place of the original. Pixiv picked up on a way to use red China's heavy handed censorship to their advantage, this time, by peppering their art with words and phrases banned by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Pixiv fought back, however, with some of the site's users adding "sensitive" keywords to their artworks, including "Tiananmen massacre," which alerted the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s massive, government-backed censorship system.

Other sensitive and forbidden keywords included "Free Hong Kong," "Independence for Taiwan," and "June 4, Tiananmen Square," all of which are heavily censored terms behind China's Great Firewall.

Germany-based university lecturer Zhu Rui said the move had deliberately and ingeniously manipulated government censors in China.

"The Japanese artists being pirated on Pixiv were forced to take this action as a last resort to defend their rights," Zhu told RFA. "The pirated website was then shut down by the iron fist of the CCP, which was great to see."

This method has been used for a longer period by YouTubers in free China to prevent their videos being swiped and reposted to other platforms based within red China.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Thursday September 29 2022, @09:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-a-family-affair dept.

Archaeogenetic study reveals large-scale continental migration into the East of England during the early Medieval Period:

Around three hundred years after the Romans left, scholars like Bede wrote about the Angles and the Saxons and their migrations to the British Isles. Scholars of many disciplines, including archaeology, history, linguists and genetics, have debated what his words might have described, and what the scale, the nature and the impact of human migration were at that time.

New genetic results now show that around 75 percent of the population in Eastern and Southern England was made up of migrant families whose ancestors must have originated from continental regions bordering the North Sea, including the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. What is more, these families interbred with the existing population of Britain, but importantly this integration varied from region to region and community to community.

"With 278 ancient genomes from England and hundreds more from Europe, we now gained really fascinating insights into population-scale and individual histories during post-Roman times", says Joscha Gretzinger, a lead author of the study. "Not only do we now have an idea of the scale of migration, but also how it played out in communities and families." Using published genetic data from more than 4,000 ancient and 10,000 present-day Europeans, Gretzinger and colleagues identified subtle genetic differences between the closely related groups inhabiting the ancient North Sea region.

[...] With the new data, the team could also consider the impact of this historic migration today. Notably the present-day English derive only 40 percent of their DNA from these historic continental ancestors, whereas 20 to 40 percent of their genetic profile likely came from France or Belgium. This genetic component can be seen in the archaeological individuals and in the graves with Frankish objects found in early Medieval graves, particularly in Kent.

"It remains unclear whether this additional ancestry related to Iron Age France is connected to a few punctuated migration events, such as the Norman conquest, or whether it was the result of centuries-long mobility across the English Channel", says Stephan Schiffels, lead senior author of the study. "Future work, specifically targeting the medieval period and later will reveal the nature of this additional genetic signal.

Journal Reference:
Gretzinger, J., Sayer, D., Justeau, P. et al. The Anglo-Saxon migration and the formation of the early English gene pool. Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05247-2


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Thursday September 29 2022, @06:53AM   Printer-friendly
from the twinkle-twinkle dept.

The FCC Finally Starts Taking Space Junk Seriously:

[...] A new proposal by the agency [FCC] would implement a five year limit for letting your dead satellite stick around in space:

Currently, a legally non-binding NASA advisory recommends that satellite operators either remove their satellites from orbit immediately post-mission, or leave them in an orbit that will slowly decay and have the satellite entering Earth's atmosphere sometime in a 25 year period.

But leaving this number of defunct satellites in orbit to fall apart over decades is no longer practical given how crowded space is getting [...]:

Defunct satellites, discarded rocket cores, and other debris now fill the space environment creating challenges for future missions. Moreover, there are more than 4,800 satellites currently operating in orbit as of the end of last year, and the vast majority of those are commercial satellites operating at altitudes below 2,000 km—the upper limit for LEO. Many of these were launched in the past two years alone, and projections for future growth suggest that there are many more to come.

Enter the new five year rule, which provides a two-year grandfather period to allow satellite operators to adjust. Satellites that are currently stumbling drunkenly around orbit with no purpose are exempt from the new rule.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Thursday September 29 2022, @04:10AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-don't-need-no-doctor-for-my-prescription-to-be-filled dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Have you ever seen your cat or dog eating grass? They do so because it can help their digestion, and many wild species use natural substances to prevent and control diseases or to repel parasites. This is called "zoopharmacognosy" or, more commonly, animal self-medication.

[...] In the field, we follow several groups of tamarins within fragments of the Atlantic forest to collect behavioral data and fecal samples for subsequent hormonal analysis. Typically, we woke up at dawn and followed the tamarins from the time they left their sleeping site until they returned to sleep, a little before sunset.

During one of these daily studies, we observed them rubbing their bodies on the trunk of a tree covered with resin. At first we thought that the tamarins were marking their territory, a behavior that is common in this species. But we soon realized that it was something else. In fact, the individuals in the group were collectively rubbing the area of the trunk from which the resin emanated and were also coating their fur with it. Our first instinct was to record the scene and take samples of the bark and resin to identify the essence of the tree.

[...] Our botanical expert later confirmed that it was a species of cabreúva, Myroxylon peruiferum, a tree well known in traditional medicine for its antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and anti-parasitic properties.

The use of this tree by the tamarins was quite intriguing, so we decided to place camera-traps at the foot of the cabreúvas to record future visits by the tamarins. [...] In total, 10 different species were observed rubbing or licking the resin exuding from the trunks of these trees. These included several emblematic neotropical mammals such as the ocelot, the collared anteater, the ring-tailed coati, the tayra, the collared peccary and the red daguet.

For many of these species, this was the first time that behavior similar to self-medication was observed and described. For example, anteaters used their large claws to rip open the bark and stimulate resin secretion before rubbing their bodies against the exposed trunk. Even more surprisingly, peccaries spread resin on each other's fur in pairs and head to head. In general, the species seemed to specifically visit the tree to acquire the resin and presumably benefit from its many virtues.

While further studies are needed to identify the properties of the resin sought by the animals and thus confirm that this is indeed zoopharmacognosy, the use of this essence in traditional medicine suggests that mammals visit cabreúvas to heal their wounds and repel parasites. For lion tamarins, the use of cabreúva resin could play an important role in the fight against yellow fever, a mosquito-borne disease that decimates primate populations.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Thursday September 29 2022, @01:27AM   Printer-friendly

Mozilla reaffirms that Firefox will continue to support current content blockers - gHacks Tech News:

From next year onward, extensions for Google Chrome and most other Chromium-based browsers, will have to rely on a new extension manifest. Manifest V3 defines the boundaries in which extensions may operate.

Current Chromium extensions use Manifest V2 for the most part, even though the January 2023 deadline is looming over the heads of every extension developer.

[...] By June 2023, Chrome and most Chromium-based browsers won't support Manifest v2 extensions anymore. Those installed will be disabled automatically, because they are no longer compatible. Those offered on the Chrome Web Store will vanish, unless their developers published an update to make them compatible with the new Manifest v3.

[...] While Manifest v3 does not mean the end for content blocking on Chrome, Edge and other Chromium-based browsers, it may limit abilities under certain circumstances. Users who install a single content blocker and no other extension that relies on the same relevant API may not notice much of a change, but those who like to add custom filter lists or use multiple extensions that rely on the API, may run into artificial limits set by Google.

[...] Mozilla reaffirmed this week that its plan has not changed. In "These weeks in Firefox: issue 124", the organization confirms that it will support the WebRequst API of Manifest v2 alongside Manifest v3.

[...] That is good news for users of the web browser who use content blockers such as uBlock Origin. The extension, which its developer claims operates best under Firefox, is the most popular extension for Firefox based on the number of installations and ratings.


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Wednesday September 28 2022, @10:42PM   Printer-friendly

New Fitbit devices will need to be linked to a Google account next year:

Starting next year, you'll only be able to activate newly released Fitbit models using a Google account. It doesn't come as a surprise for Google's services to become more intertwined with Fitbit's fitness devices after the tech giant acquired the latter for $2.1 billion in 2021. But now, we have a timeline for when Fitbit accounts will no longer be essential. As spotted by 9to5Google, Fitbit has revealed in its help page that it will launch support for Google accounts in 2023. Signing up for Fitbit and activating new devices will require the use of a Google account after that.

[...] Fitbit says its parent company made binding commitments not to use your health and wellness data for ads and will keep that information separate from what it does send to advertisers. The tech giant had insisted from the time it announced the acquisition that it will not be using Fitbit data for ad targeting. In 2020, it formally made the commitment to the European Commission to ward off an antitrust probe.

Also see: Google will start assimilating Fitbit accounts next year

The closest experience we have to these major account migrations is the Google handling of Nest accounts in 2019. That was (and still is) a very bumpy road. After years of coexistence following Google's Nest acquisition in 2014, Google decided to kill Nest accounts after five years and migrate everyone to a Google account. You weren't forced to switch, but not switching only meant a slow death of your account, since you weren't allowed to add new devices and wouldn't get any new features. The account move ended up changing a lot about how Nest works and what Nest works with, introducing regressions like the loss of location-based thermostat control for several months, breaking existing compatibility with third-party apps, and the death of the "Works with Nest" ecosystem. This also marked the end of Google's siloing of Nest data from all of Google's other data collection.

[...] So far, the only difference we've seen from the Google/Fitbit team-up is the Fitbit branding giving way to "Fitbit by Google" branding. If we follow history's example and assume Google doesn't learn from its mistakes, Fitbit's transition maps very nicely to Nest's. We imagine the Fitbit app and website being hit with the same "not invented here" stick and Google Fit taking over as the new Fitbit companion app (Google Fit no longer has a functional website). Fitbit has a lot of integration with other services, but that will probably need to be transitioned to some Google API like the Google Fit API instead. Naturally, that will involve some functionality surviving, some functionality being completely lost, and some developers being unwilling to make the jump and re-code previously working integrations. Buckle up!

Looks like I'll be done with fitbit soon. Anyone have other recommendations for decent fitness trackers?


Original Submission

posted by hubie on Wednesday September 28 2022, @07:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the turns-out-there-was-a-Didymos-shattering-kaboom dept.

NASA's DART successfully collides with asteroid

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully hit its target at 7:14 PM Eastern on Monday. The asteroid they were aiming at was 11 million km away, and controllers believe the impact was within 20m of the precise point they were aiming for.

While measurements and analysis are expected to continue for years, it appears that humanity may now have a tool for deflecting asteroids that are detected heading towards planet Earth, enabling us to not go the way of the dinosaurs.

Ground Telescopes Capture Jaw-Dropping Views of DART Asteroid Impact

Telescopes around the world honed in on the historic collision, revealing a surprisingly large and bright impact plume:

Telescopes around the world were focused on the binary asteroid system. Going into the experiment, it wasn't clear how visible the impact might be from Earth, but the images we're seeing from the ground clearly show a substantial plume emanating from Didymos.

"It is hard to comment on the stunning experience we had last night," wrote the Virtual Telescope project in a blog post. "We saw in real-time, with our very own eyes, the effects of DART slamming into its target asteroid Didymos, making it much brighter, with a huge cloud of debris." [...]

[...] I'm struck by the size of the plume, but it's difficult to tell if the impact kicked up a lot of material or if these views are a function of really bright dust. Views of Dimorphos's surface looked very rubble pile-like, suggesting a loose conglomeration of materials. If that's the case, Dimorphos may have done tremendous damage to the asteroid, but we need more data to be sure. At the very least, DART produced a substantial cloud of dust.

Definitely worth clicking through and seeing the time-lapse images from the ground. [hubie]


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2

posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 28 2022, @05:10PM   Printer-friendly
from the homespun-security dept.

US Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH) introdced S.4913 - Securing Open Source Software Act of 2022 the other day. It has been read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Here is the US Senate's press release:

U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation to help protect federal and critical infrastructure systems by strengthening the security of open source software. The legislation comes after a hearing convened by Peters and Portman on the Log4j incident earlier this year, and would direct the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to help ensure that open source software is used safely and securely by the federal government, critical infrastructure, and others. A vulnerability discovered in Log4j – which is widely used open source code – affected millions of computers worldwide, including critical infrastructure and federal systems. This led top cybersecurity experts to call it one of the most severe and widespread cybersecurity vulnerabilities ever seen.

[...] The overwhelming majority of computers in the world rely on open source code – freely available code that anyone can contribute to, develop, and use to create websites, applications, and more. It is maintained by a community of individuals and organizations. The federal government, one of the largest users of open source software in the world, must be able to manage its own risk and also help support the security of open source software in the private sector and the rest of the public sector.

The Securing Open Source Software Act would direct CISA to develop a risk framework to evaluate how open source code is used by the federal government. CISA would also evaluate how the same framework could be voluntarily used by critical infrastructure owners and operators. This will identify ways to mitigate risks in systems that use open source software. The legislation also requires CISA to hire professionals with experience developing open source software to ensure that government and the community work hand-in-hand and are prepared to address incidents like the Log4j vulnerability. Additionally, the legislation requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to issue guidance to federal agencies on the secure usage of open source software and establishes a software security subcommittee on the CISA Cybersecurity Advisory Committee.

-- Peters and Portman Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Help Secure Open Source Software

Software freedom is not named explicitly in their definition as far as their diff^wtext goes. Nor are the free-of-charge, royalty-free aspects mentioned. Yet the text of S.4913 nevertheless seems to be a nod in the direction of Free Software:

(5) OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE.—The term 'open source software' means software for which the human-readable source code is made available to the public for use, study, re-use, modification, enhancement, and re-distribution.

Behind the scenes, representatives from Microsoft appear to be milking the log4j circus for gain as shown by multiple other articles, not linked to here, and their vastly increased activity and presence in DC.

Overall, the legislative process needs to find a way to use versioning software so that all the "inserting before ...", "inserting after ...", "redesignating paragraphs ...", and other modifications can be easily processed and the current draft easily visible. However, that's not as simple as opening an account on GitLab or Src.ht and letting m$ and the rest of the world hammer at it unauthenticated and uncurated.

Previously:
(2022) The US Military Wants To Understand The Most Important Software On Earth
(2021) 'The Internet's on Fire': Techs Race to Fix Major Cybersecurity Software Flaw


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 28 2022, @02:25PM   Printer-friendly

https://phys.org/news/2022-09-artificial-intelligence-equation-quantum-physics.html

Using artificial intelligence, physicists have compressed a daunting quantum problem that until now required 100,000 equations into a bite-size task of as few as four equations—all without sacrificing accuracy. The work, published in the September 23 issue of Physical Review Letters, could revolutionize how scientists investigate systems containing many interacting electrons. Moreover, if scalable to other problems, the approach could potentially aid in the design of materials with sought-after properties such as superconductivity or utility for clean energy generation.

[...] One way of studying a quantum system is by using what's called a renormalization group. That's a mathematical apparatus physicists use to look at how the behavior of a system—such as the Hubbard model—changes when scientists modify properties such as temperature or look at the properties on different scales. Unfortunately, a renormalization group that keeps track of all possible couplings between electrons and doesn't sacrifice anything can contain tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of individual equations that need to be solved. On top of that, the equations are tricky: Each represents a pair of electrons interacting.

Di Sante and his colleagues wondered if they could use a machine learning tool known as a neural network to make the renormalization group more manageable. The neural network is like a cross between a frantic switchboard operator and survival-of-the-fittest evolution. First, the machine learning program creates connections within the full-size renormalization group. The neural network then tweaks the strengths of those connections until it finds a small set of equations that generates the same solution as the original, jumbo-size renormalization group. The program's output captured the Hubbard model's physics even with just four equations.

"It's essentially a machine that has the power to discover hidden patterns," Di Sante says. "When we saw the result, we said, 'Wow, this is more than what we expected.' We were really able to capture the relevant physics."

Journal Reference:
Domenico Di Sante, Matija Medvidović, Alessandro Toschi, et al. Deep Learning the Functional Renormalization Group, Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.136402)


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 28 2022, @11:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the better-beer-through-biology dept.

Genetically modified yeast yields intense hop aromas in beer, Oregon State research finds:

Oregon State University brewing researchers and a team of bioengineers have shown that a genetically modified yeast strain can alter the fermentation process to create beers with significantly more pronounced hop aromas.

"These findings could be extremely useful in creating new beer flavors and increasing the number of tools brewers have at their disposal for producing beers with strong and varied tropical flavors and aromas," said Tom Shellhammer, the Nor'Wester Professor of Fermentation Science at Oregon State.

The findings also demonstrate how synthetic biology can help protect industries and consumers from the effects of climate change, said Jeremy Roop, a co-author of the paper and a bioengineer with Berkeley Yeast, a company that develops yeast strains with enhanced fermentation traits.

"As droughts and wildfires have begun to damage the harvests of hops and other beer flavoring ingredients, engineered yeast offers a means to create these flavors in a way that is not affected by unpredictable climate events," Roop said. "They also allow brewers to utilize a fuller potential of aroma from hops thereby increasing the sustainability of both the hop growing and brewing processes."

[...] Hop-forward beers are typically achieved by adding large amounts of aromatic hops, with the essential oils in hops being the main contributor to aromas in beers. Many compounds are present in the essential oils, including thiols, which provide tropical aromas to beer.

But thiol content can significantly vary among hop varieties and different harvests. Also, a significant portion of the thiols found in hops are bound to other molecules thereby making them nonaromatic precursors. These new genetically modified yeast are designed to tap into the reservoir of aroma precursors and increase the amounts of free thiols, those that provide aromas brewers are seeking, in the finished beer.

[...] To accomplish this, the team genetically modified a brewers yeast strain to express an enzyme that increases the amount of two tropical flavored thiols produced during beer fermentation. [...]

"When I was tasting these beers my eyes popped out of my head," Shellhammer said. "This really represents a quantum shift, not just an incremental shift, in terms of the expression of these strong flavors."

The beers brewed with the genetically modified stains were described as intensely tropical and fruity, and were associated with guava, passionfruit, mango and pineapple aromas. The researchers also noted that the yeast strains didn't create any off flavors or affect the fermentation process in any negative way.

[...] The new strains are not meant as replacements for hops, instead they offer brewers a new tool for producing interesting and distinctive beers while also improving the sustainability of the entire brewing supply chain, Shellhammer said.

Journal Reference:
Molitor, Richard W., Jeremy I. Roop, Charles M. Denby, et al. 2022. The Sensorial and Chemical Changes in Beer Brewed with Yeast Genetically Modified to Release Polyfunctional Thiols from Malt and Hops [open], Fermentation 8. DOI: 10.3390/fermentation8080370


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday September 28 2022, @08:56AM   Printer-friendly

Removing an obsolete AMD fix makes Linux kernel 6 quicker:

One of the joys of modern silicon chips is that power management is vitally important. It hasn't been about saving power or extending battery life since the 20th century. Processor vendors survive by selling us more and more transistors, solely on the basis that most of them are turned off most of the time – otherwise the chips would rapidly incinerate themselves, no matter how good their cooling.

This requires sophisticated interfaces between the OS and the hardware, and way back in 1996, a new standard called ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) replaced the positively stone age APM (Advanced Power Management) from the Windows 3 era.

It was still a fancy new feature when The Reg reported on Linux on Itanic in 1999, and a worrying security issue in 2006. It's long been a problem for Linux because PC vendors mainly test against the industry-standard OS, which remains Windows. In 2003, Linus Torvalds – famed for his diplomacy – said:

ACPI is a complete design disaster in every way. But we're kind of stuck with it. If any Intel people are listening to this and you had anything to do with ACPI, shoot yourself now, before you reproduce.

This was a year after the Linux kernel gained ACPI support, and around then, a bug was found with some AMD Athlon machines that used VIA chipsets. When the kernel sent the STPCLK# signal to switch a CPU core to idle (although of course there was only one core in those days), the problematic machines took a while for it to happen, and so the kernel developers added some dummy I/O read instructions, just so that the processor wouldn't continue working when it was meant to be stopping. It improved compatibility and power management.

The problem is, as AMD engineer K Prateek Nayak found recently, that Linux still does it on AMD processors. He found the issue while studying the kernel's behavior with AMD's "Instruction-Based Sampling" toolkit. The issue it fixes is long gone, as are any 2002 Athlon PCs in production, we suspect.


Original Submission