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Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/oldest-unity-game-developer-group-breaks-up-over-lack-of-trust-in-the-company/

The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans.

Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding.
[...]
BUG's feelings are being echoed across large swaths of the game development community, where many prominent developers are saying Unity's public reversal has done little to nothing to restore their trust in the company.

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, for instance, gave a succinct "lol no thank you" when asked during a Reddit AMA over the weekend if their next game/sequel would again use the Unity Engine. "Even if Unity were to walk back entirely on their decisions, I don't think it would be wise to trust them while they are under the current leadership," Poncle added later in the AMA.
[...]
Some developers are now also suggesting that Unity ignored advice from the development community before announcing their initial plans earlier this month. Brandon Sheffield of Necrosoft Games (Demonschool) told Wired that his company was "privy to these [initial] install-fee changes well before they went live and pushed back against them. We knew the reaction would be resoundingly negative, but we weren't listened to."

In part because of that intentional ignorance on Unity's part, Sheffield says he will stick with an earlier pledge to never use Unity in a future project despite the later fee structure changes.

Previously:
Unity Makes Major Changes to Controversial Install-Fee Program

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Although Low Power DDR(LPDDR) memory has played a pivotal role in reducing PC laptop power usage, the drawback to the mobile-focused memory has always been its tight signaling and power delivery requirements. Designed to be placed close to its host CPU in order to minimize power expenditures and maximize clockspeeds, LPDDR memory is unsuitable for use in traditional DIMMs and SO-DIMMs – instead requiring that it be soldered down on a device in advance. But it looks like the days of soldered-down LPDDR memory are soon at an end, as this evening Samsung is announcing a new standard for removable and modular LPDDR memory: LPCAMM.

Pitched as an LPDDR-centric version of the upcoming Compression Attached Memory Module (CAMM) standard for removable mobile memory, LPCAMM is Samsung’s take on using the same style of compression connector interface for LPDDR memory. The net result is that, thanks to the more exacting specifications and shorter trace lengths used by a CAMM-style connector, Samsung says it’s possible to have modular and swappable LPDDR5 memory at last. And all in a fraction of the space a traditional SO-DIMM setup would occupy.

While the CAMM format has barely gotten off of the ground itself – JEDEC has yet to even approve the standard – Samsung is essentially opting to run with the idea to do something different with it by focusing on LPDDR memory. Notably, however, the resulting LPCAMM form factor is incompatible with CAMMs – both physically and electrically – so despite the similar names and use of compression connectors, the two are not interchangeable. But both pursue the same ideas for their respective memory types.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Scientists said on Tuesday they have found the "missing ingredient" for pink diamonds, some of the world's most expensive stones due their rarity and beauty, and the discovery could help find more.

More than 90 percent of all the pink diamonds ever found were discovered at the recently closed Argyle mine in the remote northwest of Australia.

But exactly why Argyle—which unlike most other diamond mines does not sit in the middle of a continent but on the edge of one—produced so many pink gems has remained a mystery.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, a team of Australia-based researchers said the pink diamonds were brought to the Earth's surface by the break up of the first supercontinent around 1.3 billion years ago.

Hugo Olierook, a researcher at Curtin University in the state of Western Australia and the study's lead author, told AFP that two of the three ingredients for forming pink diamonds had already been known.

Journal Information:
Hugo Olierook, Emplacement of the Argyle diamond deposit into an ancient rift zone triggered by supercontinent breakup, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40904-8.

Original Submission

looorg writes:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/26/23889956/microsoft-next-generation-nuclear-energy-smr-job-hiring

Microsoft wants to become a nuclear power. Their need for power to power their AI and other things is now so great that they want to run their own nuclear reactors.

Nuclear energy doesn't create greenhouse gas emissions. Even so, it could also open up a whole new can of worms when it comes to handling radioactive waste and building up a uranium supply chain. The role nuclear energy ought to play in combatting climate change is still hotly debated, but Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, has long been a big fan of the technology.

Based on the new job listing, it looks like Microsoft is betting on advanced nuclear reactors to be the answer. The job posting says it's hiring someone to "lead project initiatives for all aspects of nuclear energy infrastructure for global growth."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it: 'Noctalgia', a feature of the modern age.

Most of our light pollution comes from sources on the ground, but satellites don't just spoil deep-space astronomical observations when they cross a telescope's field of view; they also scatter and reflect sunlight from their solar arrays. The abundance of satellites is causing the overall brightness of the sky to increase all around the globe. Some researchers have estimated that, on average, our darkest night skies, located in the most remote regions of the world, are 10% brighter than they were a half century ago.

Humans are ineffably impacted. How can someone who has never seen a clear night sky know what they are missing? It's like someone without gonads or genital nerves trying to understand orgasm.

Many animal species are suffering as well. What good are night-adapted senses in nocturnal species if the night sky isn't much darker than the daytime sky? Researchers have identified several species whose circadian rhythms are getting thrown off, making them vulnerable to predation (or, the reverse: the inability to effectively locate prey).

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/amazon-jacks-up-price-of-ad-free-prime-video-by-2-99-starting-in-2024/

Amazon announced today that Prime Video users in the US, Canada, Germany, and the UK will automatically start seeing advertisements "in early 2024." Subscribers will receive a notification email "several weeks" in advance, at which point they can opt to pay $2.99 extra for ad-free Prime Video, Amazon said.

That takes the price of ad-free Prime Video from $8.99/month alone to $11.98/month and from $14.99/month with Prime to $17.98/month.

[...] Prime Video subscribers who don't pay the extra $2.99 (and don't just cancel their subscription altogether) are promised "meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers."

[...] With current prices starting at $9.99 per month, Prime Video was one of the cheapest ways to get streaming TV without ads. While the changes put pricing for ad-free Prime Video more on par with its competitors, it may still disappoint budget-minded cord-cutters. Streaming services started off as a cheaper, simpler alternative to cable TV. But as an influx in services, changes in pricing, confusing bundles, and scattered content have proven, we haven't gotten that far from cable after all.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/09/worm-that-jumps-from-rats-to-slugs-to-human-brains-has-invaded-southeast-us/

The dreaded rat lungworm—a parasite with a penchant for rats and slugs that occasionally finds itself rambling and writhing in human brains—has firmly established itself in the Southeast US and will likely continue its rapid invasion, a study published this week suggests.

The study involved small-scale surveillance of dead rats in the Atlanta zoo. Between 2019 and 2022, researchers continually turned up evidence of the worm. In all, the study identified seven out of 33 collected rats (21 percent) with evidence of a rat lungworm infection. The infected animals were spread throughout the study's time frame, all in different months, with one in 2019, three in 2021, and three in 2022, indicating sustained transmission.

Although small, the study "suggests that the zoonotic parasite was introduced to and has become established in a new area of the southeastern United States," the study's authors, led by researchers at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, concluded. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

[...] When a rat lungworm finds itself in a human, it does what it usually does in rats—it heads to the central nervous system and brain. Sometimes the migration of the worms to the central nervous system is asymptomatic or only causes mild transient symptoms. But, sometimes, they cause severe neurological dysfunction. This can start with nonspecific symptoms like headache, light sensitivity, and insomnia and develop into neck stiffness and pain, tingling or burning of the skin, double vision, bowel or bladder difficulties, and seizures. In severe cases, it can cause nerve damage, paralysis, coma, and even death.

It's often thought that the worm can't complete its life cycle in humans and that it ends up idly wandering around the brain for a month or two before it's eventually killed off by immune responses. However, there has been some evidence of adult worms reaching the human lungs.

Regardless, there's no specific treatment for a rat lungworm infection. No anti-parasitic drugs have proven effective, and, in fact, there's some evidence they can make symptoms worse by spurring more immune responses to dying worms. For now, supportive treatment, pain medications, and steroids are typically the only options.

Original Submission

The BBC reports that Lego won't be making blocks from recycled drink bottles after all, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66910573 It appears they did a full depth study over the last two years,

Currently, many of Lego's bricks are made using acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), a virgin plastic made from crude oil.
...
In 2021, it said it has developed prototype bricks made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, with some other chemicals added.

The hope was that material could have offered an alternative to oil-based bricks.

But Lego has now revealed that after more than two years of testing, it had found that using recycled PET didn't reduce carbon emissions.

It said the reason for that was because extra steps were required in the production process, which meant it needed to use more energy.

Two comments from your submitter:
      * Good for Lego to come clean and not continue with "greenwashing".
      * What's wrong with wooden blocks anyway? I really enjoyed mine. They didn't lock me into a fixed attachment the way that Lego does. Don't be square (aka boring)!

Original Submission

McCallum was most recently known for playing a pathologist on hit CBS TV programme NCIS, which went on to generate several spinoff series.

The Scottish-born actor died in New York on Monday. His death was due to natural causes.

CBS said he was a gifted actor and author and beloved around the world.

"He led an incredible life, and his legacy will forever live on through his family and the countless hours on film and television that will never go away."

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/unity-makes-major-changes-to-controversial-install-fee-program/

Unity has made major changes to the per-install Runtime Fee program it announced last week and made apologies for a policy that united large swathes of the game development community in anger.

In a new blog post, Unity now says that projects made on current and earlier versions of Unity will not be subject to the new runtime fee structure. Only projects that upgrade to a new "Long Term Support" (LTS) version of Unity starting in 2024 and beyond will have to pay the charges, the company says.

This change should eliminate at least some of the legal confusion over projects started under one set of terms being moved to a new set unilaterally. Unity has also restored a GitHub page that was set up in 2019 to help developers track Terms of Service changes and reinstated its commitment that "you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version."

[...] Under the newly announced plan, runtime fees will not apply to any projects made on the Unity Personal tier, which will remain completely free. In addition, Unity Personal projects will now be able to stay on that free tier until the developer behind them makes $200,000 in annual revenue, an increase from the previous $100,000 revenue cap. And Personal tier projects will no longer be required to put a "Made with Unity" splash screen at the start of play.

In addition, Unity now says the new runtime fees will only be incurred for projects that have reached $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months and 1 million "initial engagements" in their lifetime.

[...] "Unity did well here," 3D Realms co-founder and current indie developer George Broussard added. "Sort of nailed it. This is more of a walk back than anyone could have expected."

"Unity fixed all the major issues (except trust), so it's a possibility to use again in the future," indie developer Radiangames wrote. "Uninstalling Godot and Unreal and getting back to work on Instruments."

Others were less forgiving. "Unity's updated policy can be classified as the textbook definition of, 'We didn't actually hear you, and we don't care what you wanted,'" Cerulean and Drunk Robot Games engineer RedVonix wrote on social media. "We'll never ship a Unity game of our own again..." they added.

See Also: Unity Exec Tells Ars He's on a Mission to Earn Back Developer Trust

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A team of scientists appears to have unearthed a previously unknown genetic trigger for Parkinson’s disease—one much more commonly seen in people with recent African ancestry. They found that those who were born with one or two copies of this associated variant were noticeably more likely to develop Parkinson’s. The results highlight the value of conducting genetic research in diverse populations, the authors say.

Much of the research looking into the genetic underpinnings of Parkinson’s and other diseases has been done with largely European populations. And while we’ve learned a lot from this research, the relative lack of data on other groups means we could be missing important information. A large team of scientists from the U.S., the UK, and Nigeria decided to work together to help remedy this gap.

The team conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS)—a type of study that looks for variants statistically linked to diseases or traits in a large group of people. They focused specifically on nearly 200,000 people of African or mixed ancestry, mostly from Nigeria as well as parts of the U.S. About 1,500 individuals in this group were diagnosed with Parkinson’s, while the rest were not.

The researchers ultimately identified a novel variant of the gene that produces β-glucocerebrosidase (GBA1) that seemed to raise people’s risk of Parkinson’s. People who had one copy of the variant were 1.5 times more likely to have Parkinson’s than those who had no copies, and those with two copies were about 3.5 times more likely to develop it, they found. GBA1 is a protein that helps cells recycle other proteins, and several mutations involving this gene have already been linked to Parkinson’s. But this new variant was almost exclusively found in people with African ancestry.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes the following story:

Tiny water fleas could play a pivotal role in removing persistent chemical pollutants from wastewater—making it safe to use in factories, farms and homes, a new study reveals.

Rapid urbanization, population growth, unsustainable food production and climate change have put unprecedented pressure on water resources, culminating in a global water crisis. The sustainable management and reuse of water resources is paramount for ensuring societal, economic, and environmental well-being.

Persistent chemical pollutants, originating from domestic and industrial processes, escape conventional wastewater treatment and prevent its safe reuse. When wastewater effluent is released into rivers, it eventually finds its way into reservoirs, irrigation systems, and aquifer recharges. These chemical pollutants then enter the human food chain and water supply, detrimentally impacting the health of approximately 92 million individuals annually.

Scientists and engineers have discovered a method to harness Daphnia to provide a scalable low-cost, low-carbon way of removing pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and industrial chemicals from wastewater. This approach avoids the toxic byproducts typically associated with current technologies.

The researchers have developed technology that allows them to retrofit populations of water fleas into wastewater treatment plants. What makes their technology unique is the selection of strains based on their chemical tolerance which the researchers 'resurrect' from past environments.

owl writes:

https://www.righto.com/2020/11/reverse-engineering-classic-mk4116-16.html

Back in the late 1970s, the most popular memory chip was Mostek's MK4116, holding a whopping (for the time) 16 kilobits. It provided storage for computers such as the Apple II, TRS-80, ZX Spectrum, Commodore PET, IBM PC, and Xerox Alto as well as video games such as Defender and Missile Command. To see how the chip is implemented I opened one up and reverse-engineered it. I expected the circuitry to be similar to other chips of the era, using standard NMOS gates, but it was much more complex than I expected, built from low-power dynamic logic. The MK4116 also used advanced manufacturing processes to fit 16,384 high-density memory cells on the chip.

[...] In dynamic RAM, each bit is stored in a capacitor with the bit's value, 0 or 1, represented by the voltage on the capacitor.3 The advantage of dynamic RAM is that each memory cell is very small, so a lot of data can be stored on one chip.4 The downside of dynamic RAM is that the charge on a capacitor leaks away after a few milliseconds. To avoid losing data, dynamic RAM must be constantly refreshed: bits are read from the capacitors, amplified, and then written back to the capacitors. For the MK4116, all the data must be refreshed every two milliseconds.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/medical/diabetes-implant-oxygen-islet-cells/

Daily insulin injections are painful and inconvenient, which is why scientists are developing implants that treat diabetes without any need for needles. A new one looks particularly promising, as it produces oxygen to feed onboard islet cells.

[...] One alternative to those injections involves implanting islet cells that have either been harvested from a cadaver or derived from stem cells. While doing so does work in many cases, patients have to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of their lives in order to keep those cells from being rejected.

Scientists have tried encapsulating islet cells in tiny flexible implants that shield the cells from the host's immune system, yet still allow insulin produced by those cells to diffuse into the bloodstream. These implants also prevent life-sustaining oxygen from reaching the cells, however, which means those cells won't last long.

Some implants have addressed that shortcoming by incorporating either a preloaded oxygen chamber or chemical reagents which produce oxygen. Both the oxygen and the reagents run out over time, though, so the implants will have to be replaced or refilled.

Seeking a longer-term alternative, a team from MIT and Boston Children's Hospital recently developed the new device.

It's packed with hundreds of thousands of islet cells, along with a proton-exchange membrane that splits water vapor (which occurs naturally in the body) into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen harmlessly diffuses, while the oxygen goes into a storage chamber in the implant. A thin, permeable membrane in that chamber then allows the oxygen to flow through to the chamber containing the islet cells.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Americans don't talk much about peace. But it turns out they care about it a lot—they just don't talk about it the way people who have experienced war or civil conflict do.

When public opinion polls in the U.S. ask people about peace, it's either in the context of religion or world peace.

Instead of using the word peace, Americans are more likely to say that they care deeply about safety and security and issues like terrorism, crime, illegal drugs and immigration.

But they still care about the same things people in places that have faced war are focused on.

Peace is hard to define. In the dictionary, it's equated with tranquility or the absence of war. We see it as broader. Peace is the ability for people to live in harmony with themselves and with each other. In practice, however, that can mean many different things to different people.

In Colombia, for example, many communities told us they felt at peace when they had the infrastructure necessary to supply basic needs, like clean water, or when they could actively participate in regular social gatherings. In Bosnia, residents highlighted the ability to use public spaces, including rebuilt ruins from the war, as well as the presence of more day-to-day amenities like streetlights and parking.

But until a recent project in Oakland, California, we weren't thinking about our work in America as also being about peace.

Since 2021, we've been working with six community organizations in Oakland to understand how people define and experience safety and well-being in their everyday lives. As it turns out, these concepts helped us get at how Americans, who have not experienced war like the people in other regions we've worked with, might also understand peace.