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takyon writes:

TSMC Reportedly Mulls Advanced Chip Packaging Facility in Arizona

TSMC is in talks with Arizona officials to build its chip packaging facility in the state, Katie Hobbs, governor of Arizona, said in Taipei after visiting the world's No.1 foundry's headquarters, reports Bloomberg. If the plan comes to fruition, then TSMC's will have a vertically integrated chip production chain in the USA for the first time ever.

TSMC has built Fab 21 in Arizona and is currently installing production tools there. The company is also building up the second phase of the fab and has approved plans to invest $40 billion in these two production facilities. But the company apparently does not want to stop there and is discussing the possibility of building an advanced packaging fab in the state, too, as this will help it to assemble complex system-in-packages for its clients from the U.S. on American soil.

Previously: Apple Chips Made In The US Still Require Assembly In Taiwan, Report Suggests

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/eu-game-devs-ask-regulators-to-look-at-unitys-anti-competitive-bundling/

In the wake of Unity's sudden fee structure change announcement last week, a European trade group representing thousands of game developers is calling on governments to "update their regulatory framework" to curb what they see as a "looming market failure" caused by "potentially anti-competitive market behavior."

In an open letter published last week, the European Games Developer Federation goes through a lot of the now-familiar arguments for why Unity's decision to charge up to $0.20 per game install will be bad for the industry. The federation of 23 national game developer trade associations argues that the new fee structure will make it "much harder for [small and midsize developers] to build reliable business plans" by "significantly increas[ing] the game development costs for most game developers relying on [Unity's] services."

[...] Beyond simply being bad for the industry, though, the EGDF argues that "Unity's move might be anti-competitive" in a way that demands government action. The group takes a special exception to Unity's history of bundling its game engine with services like analytics, in-game chat, ad networks and mediation tools, user acquisition tools, and more. That kind of bundling creates "a significant vendor lock risk for game developers using Unity services," which "also makes it difficult for many game middleware developers to compete against Unity."

Previously:

• Unity Promises "Changes" to Install Fee Plans as Developer Fallout Continues
• Developer Dis-Unity

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/09/archaeologists-find-500-year-old-board-game-carved-in-ruins-of-polish-castle/

Some 500 years ago, construction workers in the midst of building Ćmielów Castle in Poland carved a simple game board into a slab of the sandstone floor as a diversion for their leisure time. At least that's one possible scenario for the existence of a game board recently discovered by archaeologists in the castle ruins; it's also possible the board could have been carved by children or by servants after the castle was completed, or it may have been meant as a symbolic message.

As previously reported, there is archaeological evidence for various kinds of board games from all over the world dating back millennia: Senet and Mehen in ancient Egypt, for example, or a strategy game called ludus latrunculorum ("game of mercenaries") favored by Roman legions. A 4,000-year-old board discovered last year at an archaeological site in Oman's Qumayrah Valley might be a precursor to an ancient Middle Eastern game known as the Royal Game of Ur (or the Game of Twenty Squares), a two-player game that may have been one of the precursors to backgammon (or was simply replaced in popularity by backgammon). Like backgammon, it's essentially a race game in which players compete to see who can move all their pieces along the board before their opponent.

This latest discovery isn't quite as old as that in terms of the actual carved board, but the game could be just as ancient. According to archaeologist Tomasz Olszacki, it's a two-person strategy board game called Mill, also known as Nine Men's Morris, Merels, or "cowboy checkers" in North America. The earliest-known Mill game board was found carved into the roofing slabs of an Egyptian temple at Kurna, which likely predates the Common Era. Historians believe it was well-known to the Romans, who may have learned of the game through trade routes.

Original Submission

Signal Preps its Encryption Engine for the Quantum Doomsday Inevitability

upstart writes:

Signal preps its encryption engine for the quantum doomsday inevitability:

The Signal Foundation, maker of the Signal Protocol that encrypts messages sent by more than a billion people, has rolled out an update designed to prepare for a very real prospect that's never far from the thoughts of just about every security engineer on the planet: the catastrophic fall of cryptographic protocols that secure some of the most sensitive secrets today.

The Signal Protocol is a key ingredient in the Signal, Google RCS, and WhatsApp messengers, which collectively have more than 1 billion users. It's the engine that provides end-to-end encryption, meaning messages encrypted with the apps can be decrypted only by the recipients and no one else, including the platforms enabling the service. Until now, the Signal Protocol encrypted messages and voice calls with X3DH, a specification based on a form of cryptography known as Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman.

Often abbreviated as ECDH, Elliptic Curve Diffie-Hellman is a protocol unto its own. It combines two main building blocks. The first involves the use of elliptic curves to form asymmetric key pairs, each of which is unique to each user. One key in the pair is public and available to anyone to use for encrypting messages sent to the person who owns it. The corresponding private key is closely guarded by the user. It allows the user to decrypt the messages. Cryptography relying on a public-private key pair is often known as asymmetric encryption.

The security of asymmetric encryption is based on mathematical one-way functions. Also known as trapdoor functions, these problems are easy to compute in one direction and substantially harder to compute in reverse. In elliptic curve cryptography, this one-way function is based on the Discrete Logarithm problem in mathematics. The key parameters are based on specific points in an elliptic curve, which is defined as the field of integers modulo prime P.

When someone knows the starting point (A) in the above image showing an elliptic curve and the number of hops required to get to the endpoint (E), it's easy to know where (E) is. But when all someone knows is the starting and end points, it's next to impossible to deduce how many hops are required.

As explained in an Ars article from 2013:

Let's imagine this curve as the setting for a bizarre game of billiards. Take any two points on the curve and draw a line through them; the line will intersect the curve at exactly one more place. In this game of billiards, you take a ball at point A and shoot it toward point B. When it hits the curve, the ball bounces either straight up (if it's below the x-axis) or straight down (if it's above the x-axis) to the other side of the curve.

We can call this billiards move on two points "dot." Any two points on a curve can be dotted together to get a new point.

A dot B = C

We can also string moves together to "dot" a point with itself over and over.

A dot A = B

A dot B = C

A dot C = D

...

It turns out that if you have two points, an initial point "dotted" with itself n times to arrive at a final point, finding out n when you only know the final point and the first point is hard. To continue our bizarro billiards metaphor, imagine that one person plays our game alone in a room for a random period of time. It is easy for him to hit the ball over and over following the rules described above. If someone walks into the room later and sees where the ball has ended up, even if they know all the rules of the game and where the ball started, they cannot determine the number of times the ball was struck to get there without running through the whole game again until the ball gets to the same point. Easy to do, hard to undo. This is the basis for a very good trapdoor function.

Well, that's all clear then.....

sweettea writes:

The All Systems Go! conference happened last week in Berlin, devoted to systemd / container / image-building topics. Several cool talks focused on immutable distributions: their usages and virtues, particularly NixOS. NixOS is the foremost immutable, reproducable, and atomically upgradable Linux distribution, and a powerful building block for building easily deployable services.

Andreas Herrmann, the first Bazel community expert, talked about the value of a reproducible build of your software and the merits of using an immutable distribution like Nix to make your builds better. Xe Iaso's talk on writing your own NixOS modules for your own build dependencies to ensure your software is reproducable. Lots more talks, but mostly systemd-related: check out the list of talks and the recordings!

All Systems Go 2023 will feature Lennart Poettering talking about Unified Kernel Images along with talks on encrypted Btrfs sub-volumes, Linux security, BPF filtering, soft reboots, Linux and TPMs, systemd-repart, mkosi, and Microsoft talking about their image-based Linux deployments on Azure, among other topics.

Related: The Future of Linux: Exploring Immutable Distributions

Original Submission

cmdrklarg writes:

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasas-parker-probe-flew-through-a-massive-solar-eruption-and-caught-it-all-on-camera

NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew right through a massive solar eruption and caught the whole thing on camera. It's the first up-close footage ever captured of a solar explosion like this.

The video, released by scientists at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, features an especially powerful coronal mass ejection that took place last year.

CMEs are large explosions of super-hot plasma that erupt from the Sun's atmosphere. They consist of charged particles that can trigger radio blackouts and cause other mayhem if they strike Earth.

NASA said that the CME that struck the Parker Solar Probe was "one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections ever recorded."

Lucky for those scientists currently studying the sun, NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew right through the CME and survived it, capturing the event on camera. (The eruption starts at around the 14-second mark in the clip below.)

[...] Also read that the CME was around the same size as the 1859 "Carrington Event". The Carrington Event was the most intense geomagnetic storm in recorded history, peaking from 1 to 2 September 1859 during solar cycle 10. [...] The geomagnetic storm was most likely the result of a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun colliding with Earth's magnetosphere.

Woof!!

Original Submission

Significance:
A consistent and comprehensive quantitative framework of the cells in the human body could benefit many areas of biology. We compile data to estimate cell mass, size range, and cell count for some 1,200 cell groups, from the smallest red blood cells to the largest muscle fibers, across 60 tissues in a representative male, female, and 10-y-old child. We find large-scale patterns revealing that both cellular biomass in any given logarithmic cell-size class and the coefficient of cell-size variation are both approximately independent of cell size. These patterns are suggestive of a whole-organism trade-off between cell size and count and imply the existence of cell-size homeostasis across cell types.

Abstract:
Cell size and cell count are adaptively regulated and intimately linked to growth and function. Yet, despite their widespread relevance, the relation between cell size and count has never been formally examined over the whole human body. Here, we compile a comprehensive dataset of cell size and count over all major cell types, with data drawn from >1,500 published sources. We consider the body of a representative male (70 kg), which allows further estimates of a female (60 kg) and 10-y-old child (32 kg). We build a hierarchical interface for the cellular organization of the body, giving easy access to data, methods, and sources (https://humancelltreemap.mis.mpg.de/). In total, we estimate total body counts of ≈36 trillion cells in the male, ≈28 trillion in the female, and ≈17 trillion in the child. These data reveal a surprising inverse relation between cell size and count, implying a trade-off between these variables, such that all cells within a given logarithmic size class contribute an equal fraction to the body's total cellular biomass. We also find that the coefficient of variation is approximately independent of mean cell size, implying the existence of cell-size regulation across cell types. Our data serve to establish a holistic quantitative framework for the cells of the human body, and highlight large-scale patterns in cell biology.

NotSanguine writes:

The University of Michigan issued a press release concerning new research on the growth (or lack thereof) of large-scale structures in the universe.

From the press release:

As the universe evolves, scientists expect large cosmic structures to grow at a certain rate: dense regions such as galaxy clusters would grow denser, while the void of space would grow emptier.

But University of Michigan researchers have discovered that the rate at which these large structures grow is slower than predicted by Einstein's Theory of General Relativity.

They also showed that as dark energy accelerates the universe's global expansion, the suppression of the cosmic structure growth that the researchers see in their data is even more prominent than what the theory predicts. Their results are published in Physical Review Letters.

Galaxies are threaded throughout our universe like a giant cosmic spider web. Their distribution is not random. Instead, they tend to cluster together. In fact, the whole cosmic web started out as tiny clumps of matter in the early universe, which gradually grew into individual galaxies, and eventually galaxy clusters and filaments.

AnonTechie writes:

Phys.org

Stressors like climate trauma, corporate deceit and political incompetence signal the threat of societal collapse, a new book asserts.

This claim lays the foundation for exploring arguments of "collapsology" in a new book by Robert R. Janes Ph.D., "Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat." The book also contends with the unique role that can be played by museums during a mounting climate crisis.

"Social ecology is an integral and moral dimension of the collapse and the crisis we face—that social and environmental issues are intertwined, and both must be considered simultaneously," Dr. Janes, a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester, explains.

"Our collective failure to honor this relationship lies at the core of our failure as species. It befits all museums, irrespective of their disciplinary focus and loyalties, to bridge the divide between nature and culture in all that they do."

[ABSTRACT]: The Museum as Lifeboat

More information: Robert R. Janes, Museums and Societal Collapse (2023). DOI: 10.4324/9781003344070

Are we there yet ? or, is this a case of crying wolf ?

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

AMD has introduced its EPYC 8004-series processors codenamed Siena. The new CPUs come in an all-new SP6 form-factor, pack up to 64 Zen 4c cores, and feature a six-channel DDR5 memory subsystem. AMD's EPYC 'Siena' processors are designed for edge and communications servers that rely on one processor and require advanced I/O and power efficiency more than raw performance.

"The new EPYC 8004 Series processors extend AMD leadership in single socket platforms by offering excellent CPU energy efficiency in a package tuned to meet the needs of space and power-constrained infrastructure," said Dan McNamara, senior vice president and general manager, Server Business, AMD.

AMD's EPYC 8004-series 'Siena' processors for intelligent edge applications use an all-new SP6 platform, but re-use core components of Bergamo CPUs for high-density servers, such four 16-core Zen 4c general-purpose chiplets as well as I/O die used by the these CPUs. The processor feature from eight to 64 cores clocked at 2.0 – 3.10 GHz and a TDP ranging from 80W to 200W. Meanwhile, it is possible to configure these processors for an up to 225W TDP or reduce their power consumption to 70W.

While AMD's Zen 4c are smaller and less power hungry than full-blown Zen 4 cores, they support the same feature set as their larger counterparts and can therefore run applications that rely on instructions like AVX-512. Although AMD's EPYC 9004-series processors deliver higher performance, AMD's EPYC 8004-series CPUs promise a lower total cost of ownership and higher power efficiency. AMD claims that Siena offers an up to 2x better performance per watt compared to competitors (Xeon Platinum 8490H, Xeon Platinum 8471N ) in SPECpower_ssj 2008. Specifically, the EPYC 8324P showcases up to 1.16x better performance per core in video encoding tasks (than Intel's 32-core Xeon 6421N), according to benchmark results conducted by AMD. In IoT Edge gateway workloads, an eight-core EPYC 8024P offers nearly 1.8x the total SPECrate 2017_int_base throughput performance per 8kW rack against an eight-core competitor (Intel's Xeon Platinum 8471N).

The new AMD EPYC 8004-series processors feature a six-channel DDR5-4800 subsystem that supports up to 1.152 TB of memory. Intelligent edge servers are a relatively new type of application. Some of these machines can take advantage of traditional CPUs, whereas the other pack special-purpose accelerators. That said, modern I/O capabilities is a must for such machines. Therefore, AMD's Siena also support 96 PCIe 5.0 lanes with 48 of them supporting the CXL 1.1+ protocol on top for advanced modern accelerators (for AI inference or other applications) and/or memory expanders.

AMD says that its EPYC 8004 'Siena' processors are now available inside new edge servers from Dell (PowerEdge C6615), Lenovo (ThinkEdge SE455 V3), and Supermicro (H13 generation of WIO Servers). The new CPUs are also endorsed by Ericsson and Microsoft Azure.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Gene required for root hair growth, nitrate foraging found in grasses:

September 19, 2023

Gene required for root hair growth, nitrate foraging found in grasses

Scientists have found a plant gene that drives the growth of root hairs, the tiny structures that help plants find water and nutrients in the soil.

Identified by a team led by Washington State University researcher Karen Sanguinet, the gene, dubbed "BUZZ," causes faster-growing, denser webs of roots and may also determine how plants find and use nitrates, a prime source of nitrogen essential to plant growth. Nitrates are also used in fertilizers that can pollute the environment as runoff, and this genetic discovery could ultimately help plant scientists find ways to grow crops more sustainably.

"Nitrate runoff and nitrogen use efficiency are some of the preeminent issues facing agriculture," said Sanguinet, associate professor in WSU's Department of Crop and Soil Sciences. "If you can understand the genetic mechanisms that control nitrate uptake and signaling, as well as how plants can better use nitrate, it's advantageous for agriculture, soil, water, fertilizer application and the entire nitrogen cycle."

The study, published in the journal New Phytologist, found that the BUZZ gene adjusts root growth—both the rate and lateral root initiation—in response to the nitrate concentration in nearby soil.

"Expression of the BUZZ gene is turned up in response to nitrate, urea, and ammonia presumably so that roots can find nitrogen in the soil," Sanguinet said. "Loss of the gene shows a foraging root phenotype even when the nitrate supply is plentiful."

The gene is expressed at very low levels and had never been described before, which made finding it more challenging.

Journal Reference:
(1) (DOI: https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.19079)
(2) (DOI: 10.1111/nph.19079)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Powerful Nerf Blaster Aims To Fire 100 Darts Per Second:

Nerf has made plenty of fully-automatic blasters over the years, but their toys typically lack punch, precision, and fire rate. [3DprintedLife] set about building a blaster to rectify that last shortcoming, aiming for design that could fire 100 darts per second.

The design uses half length darts which tend to fly a little nicer from high-powered blasters. It fires them using belts driven by powerful motors, similar to wheel blasters. The darts themselves are loaded into a drum magazine which has sliders to push the darts into the wheels as the drum rotates by.

It all sounds straightforward enough, but getting it all working in harmony is a challenge—particularly at a fire rate of 100 darts per second. The build video explains the trials and tribulations involved in getting near that fire rate, with darts getting shredded and magazines throwing out parts along the way. A good helping of iterative design helps get everything playing nice, with the darts neatly leaving the magazine and flying downrange at great speed. The slow-motion videos of darts flying out of the blaster in rapid succession are a special treat.

I found the embedded YouTube video to be amazing! Just the right match between exposition of the various steps in designing and debugging the gun!

Update:

Upon further reflection: how long does it take to reload? Hmm?

Original Submission

Meeting Announcement: The next meeting of the SoylentNews governance committee is scheduled for Friday, September 22nd, 2023 at 20:30 UTC (1:30pm PDT, 4:30pm EDT) in #governance on SoylentNews IRC. Logs of the meeting will be available afterwards for review, and minutes will be published when available.

The agenda for the upcoming meeting will also be published when available. Minutes and agenda, and other governance committee information are to be found on the SoylentNews Wiki at: https://wiki.staging.soylentnews.org/wiki/Governance

You, the community, are always welcome to observe and participate, and you're invited to the meeting.

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/most-notorious-illegal-shadow-library-sued-by-textbook-publishers/

Yesterday, some of the biggest textbook publishers sued Library Genesis, an illegal shadow library that publishers are accusing of "extensive violations of federal copyright law."

Publishers suing include Cengage Learning, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill, and Pearson Education. They claim that Library Genesis (aka Libgen) is operated by unknown individuals based outside the United States, who know that the shadow library is "one of the largest, most notorious, and far-reaching infringement operations in the world" and intentionally violate copyright laws with "absolutely no legal justification for what they do."

[...] Publishers hope their lawsuit will finally end years of Libgen's alleged mass copyright infringement, but shadow libraries like Libgen have proven resilient through multiple attacks from the highest levels of US law enforcement. Even when the US government arrested operators of another shadow library called Z-Library last year, Z-Library returned a few months later and found a way to continue operating after the US seized its login domain.

Ars could not immediately reach publishers' lawyers or Libgen for comment. [Update: Publishers' lawyer Matthew Oppenheim told Ars that Libgen is a "thieves' den" of illegal books, and "there is no question" that Libgen's conduct is "massively illegal." Oppenheim said that "really, the only question is why it's been allowed to exist this long." He also said that it's possible that US companies may not realize that they are aiding Libgen's infringement, but publishers hope that when they "are confronted" with the fact "that this library is massively illegal, that hopefully they will voluntarily do the right thing" and cut off Libgen.]

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://nicole.express/2023/have-you-read-atari-today.html

From Pitfall II to the Channel F to the NES cartridge port, a spectre has lurked in the background of Nicole Express: the spectre of the Atari 2600. The best-selling console of the second generation, an icon, and yet to date, I have not covered it, or even owned one. That all changes today, and we'll find out what the deal is with this strange artifact from the past. Plus, we'll get some S-Video.

[...] Those three chips are right in the center:

• The MOS Technology 6507 CPU. This is a 6502 die, with some pins not hooked up. The implications of this are important. The fact that this particular 6507 is made by Taiwan-based UMC probably isn't.
• The MOS Technology 6532 RIOT. This does exactly what the name implies: it contains 128 bytes of RAM (twice the Channel F!), provides two 8-bit I/O ports, and a programmable Timer. It's also made by UMC.
• The Atari Television Interface Adapter (TIA). The only real custom chip onboard, the TIA is what made the 2600 the 2600. It generates a video signal using various internal registers, as well as handling paddles, sound, and some other functions. Someone wrote on this one.

Original Submission