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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/17/battery-electric-vehicles-evs-supersonic-airliner-concorde/

"Today I want to compare the life story of Concorde – the world's first commercial supersonic airliner – with the story to date of battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and to suggest a possible future for the latter. Concorde turned out to be a technology too far, and I suggest that BEVs are heading the same way."

[...] "Better technology will help, of course, but not enough. In 1974, when I bought my first electronic calculator, the AA battery had a carbon rod core and an outer casing of zinc. Intensive research and development since then has provided us with the lithium-ion battery, which can store six times as much electrical energy in the same volume. However, the energy density is still 40 times worse than petrol. Experts suggest that the best we can hope for is an improvement by a factor of two over the next 50 years.

None of these problems will be solved in the next few years, and there is now evidence that many car manufacturers are having second thoughts about involvement in the sector. The most likely outcome is that BEVs will be a rerun of the Concorde story, ending up as a short-lived plaything for the wealthy few, and for a similar complex set of reasons."

I think a mix of EV and ICE is best, both have strong and weak sides. It is stupid to develop a crash program for expensive technology as a solution to what many good scientists consider a non-problem.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Gaming on RISC-V? Well, that's a possibility.

A little over two years ago an enthusiast managed to make AMD's Radeon RX 6700 XT work on a RISC-V development board under Linux, which was not a particularly easy task. Since then, AMD's Linux graphics drivers have made a big leap in working with RISC-V systems and now it is possible to use AMD's latest graphics cards, including the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, with RISC-V platforms out of the box. 

Legacy AMD Radeon graphics cards, such as those based on the company's original GCN architecture from early 2010s, can run on practically all platforms under Linux, according to Phoronix. By contrast, AMD's latest GPUs, such as those powered by the Navi architecture (which are among the best graphics cards), use a different display code to initialize and kernel-mode FPU support that were not supported on RISC-V — which is why they could not work on RISC-V boards out of the box, and required manual patching.

This issue is now being fixed thanks to new updates from SiFive, and it looks promising for the upcoming Linux 6.8 kernel release.

"This series allows using newer AMD GPUs (e.g., Navi) on RISC-V boards such as SiFive's HiFive Unmatched," a statement by SiFive reads. "Those GPUs need CONFIG_DRM_AMD_DC_FP to initialize, which requires kernel-mode FPU support."

These changes are under review and are expected to be included in the next Linux 6.8 kernel release, and will make it easier to use the latest AMD Radeon graphics cards with RISC-V and open-source drivers.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Abandoned animals, kids with cancer, disabled veterans: These and other pitches for charity can move your emotions and have you reaching for your credit card.

But beware: Especially around the holidays, fake charity scammers are hard at work trying to part you from your hard-earned cash.

But scammers also know how to build trust, she warned.

"They may call you using a local phone number," Parti said in a Virginia Tech news release. "That tactic can give you a false sense of security."

You then start listening to their pitch, expertly designed to play on your emotions and often confusingly misleading.

"It will be a good one. It will tug at your heartstrings," Parti said. "But listen closely because they will never actually specify how they will help. They may even claim that you've donated before and ask you to do it again."

Is this a real charity or a scammer? To quickly find out, check databases like the search tool for tax-exempt organizations at the Internal Revenue Service or watchdog groups such as Charity Watch to see if the group being pitched is legit, Parti said.

And pay very close attention to the name of the charity: One common ruse is to give listeners a name that very closely mimics that of a legitimate charity. If it's just a shade different from the title of another well-known charity (for example, American Society for Cancer, not American Cancer Society), it could be a scam.

Scammers will try and get all the personal info from you they can: While a legit charity may simply want credit card info for a donation, a scammer may go further and try and get your Social Security number or bank account details. Don't fall for it, Parti said.

Have you ever fallen for a scam, or do you know family or friends that have?

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-archaeologists-uncover-europe-hidden-bronze.html

Archaeologists from University College Dublin, working with colleagues from Serbia and Slovenia, have uncovered a previously unknown network of massive sites in the heart of Europe that could explain the emergence of the continent's Bronze Age megaforts—the largest prehistoric constructions seen prior to the Iron Age.

Using satellite images and aerial photography to stitch together the prehistoric landscape of the south Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, the team discovered more than 100 sites belonging to a complex society.

Their commonplace use of defensible enclosures was a precursor and likely influence behind the famous hillforts of Europe, built to protect communities later in the Bronze Age.

"Some of the largest sites, we call these mega-forts, have been known for a few years now, such as Gradište Iđoš, Csanádpalota, Sântana or the mind-blowing Corneşti Iarcuri enclosed by 33km of ditches and eclipsing in size the contemporary citadels and fortifications of the Hittites, Mycenaeans or Egyptians," said lead author Associate Professor Barry Molloy, UCD School of Archaeology.

"What is new, however, is finding that these massive sites did not stand alone, they were part of a dense network of closely related and codependent communities. At their peak, the people living within this lower Pannonian network of sites must have numbered into the tens of thousands."

The Carpathian Basin extends across parts of central and southeast Europe, with the vast Pannonian Plain lying at its center, with the River Danube cutting through it.

More information: Barry Molloy et al, Resilience, innovation and collapse of settlement networks in later Bronze Age Europe: New survey data from the southern Carpathian Basin, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288750

Journal information: PLoS ONE

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

After 25 years of keeping the internet strong and stable, the nonprofit ICANN -- responsible for its technical infrastructure -- is warning that increasingly polarized geopolitics could start cracking the foundations of the online world:

"It's super important to differentiate between what countries decide to do with controlling content, as opposed to the technical infrastructure," the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' interim chief executive Sally Costerton told AFP in a recent interview.

"The risk of fragmentation at the technical level is enormous. The foundation crumbles and game over."

[...] But as online abuses -- from misinformation to hateful content -- have grown more insidious, interest has heightened in giving governments more control of the internet, including aspects that have previously been covered by ICANN.

Shifting control of the internet's infrastructure to governments and trade groups, and shutting out the technical community, could crack its foundation, Costerton warned.

[...] "We are living in an increasingly nationalistic, polarized world," Costerton said.

"If you want all that wonderful content, and you want the magic trick to carry on, you must maintain the current trust-based model."

Also at TechXplore, MSN and DNyuz.

Related: ICANN Warns UN May Sideline Techies From Internet Governance

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Nvidia has given the world a "SuperNIC" – another device to improve network performance, just like the "SmartNIC," the "data processing unit" (DPU), and the "infrastructure processing unit" (IPU). But the GPU-maker insists its new device is more than just a superlative.

So what exactly is a SuperNIC? An Nvidia explainer describes it as a "new class of networking accelerator designed to supercharge AI workloads in Ethernet-based networks." Key features include high-speed packet reordering, advanced congestion control, programmable I/O pathing, and, critically, integration with Nvidia's broader hardware and software portfolio.

If that sounds like what a SmartNIC or DPU would do, you're not wrong. The SuperNIC is even based on a current Nvidia DPU, the BlueField-3.

Nvidia's BlueField-3 SuperNIC promises Infiniband-ish network performance – if you buy Nvidia's fancy 51.2Tbit/sec switches – Click to enlarge. Source: Nvidia.

The difference is the SuperNIC is designed to work alongside Nvidia's own Spectrum-4 switches as part of its Spectrum-X offering.

Nvidia's senior veep for networking, Kevin Deierling, emphasized in an interview with The Register that the SuperNIC isn't a rebrand of the DPU, but rather a different product.

Before considering the SuperNIC, it's worth remembering that SmartNICs/IPUs/DPUs are network interface controllers (NICs) that include modest compute capabilities – sometimes fixed-function ASICs, with or without a couple of Arm cores sprinkled in, or even highly customizable FPGAs.

Many of Intel and AMD's SmartNICs are based around FPGAs, while Nvidia's BlueField-3 class of NICs pairs Arm cores with a bunch of dedicated accelerator blocks for things like storage, networking, and security offload.

This variety means that certain SmartNICs are better suited, or at the very least marketed, towards certain applications more than others.

For the most part, we've seen SmartNICs – or whatever your preferred vendor wants to call them – deployed in one of two scenarios. The first is in large cloud and hyperscale datacenters where they're used to offload and accelerate storage, networking, security, and even hypervisor management from the host CPU.

Amazon Web Services' custom Nitro cards are a prime example. The cards are designed to physically separate the cloudy control plane from the host. The result is that more CPU cycles are available to run tenants' workloads.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-reveals-clues-whales-dolphins-echolocation.html

A study published in Diversity provides new insight into how toothed whales and dolphins came to navigate the underwater world using sound waves.

Whales and dolphins, which lack external ears, rely on a technique called echolocation to navigate and hunt in the dark. Much like shouting and listening for echoes, these animals emit high-pitched sounds that bounce off objects and reflect back at them, allowing them to map out their surroundings.

Their skulls and soft tissues near and within the blowhole are asymmetrical, meaning that a structure on one side is larger or differently shaped than its counterpart on the other side. This "lopsidedness" enables the production of sound. At the same time, a fat-filled lower jawbone conducts sound waves to the internal ear, allowing the animals to locate where sounds are coming from (directional hearing).

Yet, how whales and dolphins evolved this sophisticated "built-in sonar" is not fully understood.

Now, research co-authored by Jonathan Geisler, Ph.D., professor and chair of anatomy at New York Institute of Technology, and first author Robert Boessenecker, Ph.D., paleontologist and research associate at the University of California Museum of Paleontology, provides vital clues.

The researchers analyzed a large collection of fossils that included two ancient species of dolphins within the genus Xenorophus, one of which is new to science. These species are some of the primitive members of Odontoceti, the suborder of marine mammals that includes all living echolocating whales and dolphins.

Journal Reference:
Robert W. Boessenecker et al, New Skeletons of the Ancient Dolphin Xenorophus sloanii and Xenorophus simplicidens sp. nov. (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the Oligocene of South Carolina and the Ontogeny, Functional Anatomy, Asymmetry, Pathology, and Evolution of the Earliest Odontoceti, Diversity (2023). DOI: 10.3390/d15111154

Original Submission

hubie writes:

A system of ancient ceramic water pipes, the oldest ever unearthed in China, shows that neolithic people were capable of complex engineering feats without the need for a centralised state authority:

In a study published in Nature Water, the archaeological team describe a network of ceramic water pipes and drainage ditches at the Chinese walled site of Pingliangtai dating back 4,000 years to a time known as the Longshan period. The network shows cooperation amongst the community to build and maintain the drainage system, though no evidence of a centralised power or authority.

Dr Yijie Zhuang (UCL Institute of Archaeology), senior and corresponding author on the paper, said: "The discovery of this ceramic water pipe network is remarkable because the people of Pingliangtai were able to build and maintain this advanced water management system with stone age tools and without the organisation of a central power structure. This system would have required a significant level of community-wide planning and coordination, and it was all done communally."

The ceramic water pipes make up a drainage system which is the oldest complete system ever discovered in China. Made by interconnecting individual segments, the water pipes run along roads and walls to divert rainwater and show an advanced level of central planning at the neolithic site.

What's surprising to researchers is that the settlement of Pingliangtai shows little evidence of social hierarchy. Its houses were uniformly small and show no signs of social stratification or significant inequality amongst the population. Excavations at the town's cemetery likewise found no evidence of a social hierarchy in burials, a marked difference from excavations at other nearby towns of the same era.

The level of complexity associated with these pipes refutes an earlier understanding in archaeological fields that holds that only a centralised state power with governing elites would be able to muster the organisation and resources to build a complex water management system. While other ancient societies with advanced water systems tended to have a stronger, more centralised governance, or even despotism, Pingliangtai demonstrates that was not always needed, and more egalitarian and communal societies were capable of these kinds of engineering feats as well.

Journal Reference:
Li, C., Cao, Y., Zhang, C. et al. Earliest ceramic drainage system and the formation of hydro-sociality in monsoonal East Asia [open]. Nat Water 1, 694–704 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44221-023-00114-4

Original Submission

fliptop writes:

Google's Threat Analysis Group announced a zero-day against the Zimbra Collaboration email server that has been used against governments around the world:

In June 2023, Google's Threat Analysis Group (TAG) discovered an in-the-wild 0-day exploit targeting Zimbra Collaboration, an email server many organizations use to host their email. Since discovering the 0-day, now patched as CVE-2023-37580, TAG has observed four different groups exploiting the same bug to steal email data, user credentials, and authentication tokens. Most of this activity occurred after the initial fix became public on Github. To ensure protection against these types of exploits, TAG urges users and organizations to keep software fully up-to-date and apply security updates as soon as they become available.

TAG first discovered the 0-day, a reflected cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerability, in June when it was actively exploited in targeted attacks against Zimbra's email server. Zimbra pushed a hotfix to their public Github on July 5, 2023 and published an initial advisory with remediation guidance on July 13, 2023. They patched the vulnerability as CVE-2023-37580 on July 25, 2023.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security.

Related: State Hackers Breach Defense, Energy, Healthcare Orgs Worldwide

Original Submission

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/starships-33-engines-created-the-mother-of-all-shock-diamonds

The War Zone has an interesting report on the shock diamonds produced by the engines of the Starship rocket during the recent launch attempt.

"When you typically see a shock diamond or a mach diamond, it can be from like a jet engine test, or a single rocket nozzle test. [When you] look at those up close... you see the same shock diamond effect on the smaller scale."

"But what was interesting, specifically about this case [the second Starship launch], is you had 33 engines firing together, which you would kind of intuitively think would make for a pretty messy environment. I think close up [this] is probably true, there's some complicated dynamics happening there."

Additionally, the article features a passel of pictures of the launch.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

An innovative new study from the Texas A&M School of Public Health offers objective insight on employee behavior and the potential benefits of flexible work arrangements:

If there's one thing most office workers can agree on, it's that they tend to feel less productive toward the end of the day and the end of each work week. Now, a team of researchers at Texas A&M University has found objective evidence of this phenomenon in action.

A recent interdisciplinary study at the Texas A&M School of Public Health used a novel method of data collection to show that employees really are less active and more prone to mistakes on afternoons and Fridays, with Friday afternoon representing the lowest point of worker productivity.

[...] "Most studies of worker productivity use employee self-reports, supervisory evaluations or wearable technology, but these can be subjective and invasive," said Benden, professor and head of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. "Instead, we used computer usage metrics — things like typing speed, typing errors and mouse activity — to get objective, noninvasive data on computer work patterns."

The team then compared computer usage patterns across different days of the week and times of the day to see what kinds of patterns emerged.

"We found that computer use increased during the week, then dropped significantly on Fridays," said Roh, assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. "People typed more words and had more mouse movement, mouse clicks and scrolls every day from Monday through Thursday, then less of this activity on Friday."

In addition, Roh said, computer use decreased every afternoon, and especially on Friday afternoons.

[...] What is the takeaway for employers? To start, flexible work arrangements, such as hybrid work or a four-day work week, may lead to happier and more productive employees.

Journal Reference:
Roh T, Esomonu C, Hendricks J, Aggarwal A, Hasan NT, Benden M (2023) Examining workweek variations in computer usage patterns: An application of ergonomic monitoring software. PLoS ONE 18(7): e0287976. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287976

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

World War II concluded decades ago, but live mines lurking on the ocean floor still pose threats, potentially spewing unexpected geysers or releasing contaminants into the water. Experts conduct controlled explosions to clear underwater munitions, but concerns have arisen over the environmental impacts of these blasts.

Now, results published in Environmental Science & Technology show that the contamination produced by detonation depends on the blast type, with weaker explosions leaving behind more potentially toxic residues.

After World War II, according to research estimates, up to 385,000 metric tons of unexploded munitions—including 40,000 tons of chemical munitions—were dumped into the Baltic Sea. These discarded weapons remain dangerous: They have the potential to jet plumes of water and sediment upward, send shock waves through the ocean, and punch holes in ships' hulls.

In addition, the mines' metal shells can corrode in seawater, leaking potentially toxic explosive compounds, such as TNT, into the environment over time. Technicians typically clear historic munitions with controlled explosions, but there is debate among scientists about whether weak or strong blasts are better.

While smaller blasts minimize shock waves and physical damage, Edmund Maser and coworkers suspected that these weaker ones release more toxic residue than strong blasts. To test whether this is true, the team wanted to measure the explosive residues near underwater mines after controlled detonations of the two different intensities.

taylorvich writes:

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-11-emotions-music-powerful-memories.html

Time flows in a continuous stream—yet our memories are divided into separate episodes, all of which become part of our personal narrative. How emotions shape this memory formation process is a mystery that science has only recently begun to unravel. The latest clue comes from UCLA psychologists, who have discovered that fluctuating emotions elicited by music help form separate and durable memories.

The study, published in Nature Communications, used music to manipulate the emotions of volunteers performing simple tasks on a computer. The researchers found that the dynamics of people's emotions molded otherwise neutral experiences into memorable events.

"Changes in emotion evoked by music created boundaries between episodes that made it easier for people to remember what they had seen and when they had seen it," said lead author Mason McClay, a doctoral student in psychology at UCLA. "We think this finding has great therapeutic promise for helping people with PTSD and depression."

As time unfolds, people need to group information, since there is too much to remember (and not all of it useful). Two processes appear to be involved in turning experiences into memories over time: The first integrates our memories, compressing and linking them into individualized episodes; the other expands and separates each memory as the experience recedes into the past. There's a constant tug of war between integrating memories and separating them, and it's this push and pull that helps to form distinct memories. This flexible process helps a person understand and find meaning in their experiences, as well as retain information.

"It's like putting items into boxes for long-term storage," said corresponding author David Clewett, an assistant professor of psychology at UCLA. "When we need to retrieve a piece of information, we open the box that holds it. What this research shows is that emotions seem to be an effective box for doing this sort of organization and for making memories more accessible."

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes the following story:

North Korea has notified Japan that its third attempt to launch a satellite will take place between November 22 and December 1.

According to a notice posted by Japan's coast guard, it expects the rocket's trajectory to pass over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea.

South Korea is also aware of the military spy satellite’s launch. Defense minister Shin Won-sik reportedly noted over the weekend that the launch is imminent. The minister also pointed out that the hermit kingdom's mission could be timed to launch before the South's first homegown reconnaissance satellite launches on November 30 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9.

According to South Korean public broadcaster KBS, the military warned of a stern response – including a partial suspension of the 2018 inter-Korean military deal.

On the subject of spying and North Korea, Radio Free Asia has reported that those found in the hermit kingdom with unregistered laptops and tablets will be punished as spies.

The media agency reports that punishment could include execution – as was the case for a student who allegedly smuggled copies of the Netflix series Squid Game – or years of hard labor.

North Korea's concern is that those exposed to foreign media or entertainment could pick up on "anti-socialist" ideas.

acid andy writes:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a45533729/periodic-table-of-shapes/

Just as molecules can be broken down into atoms, so too can mathematical shapes be broken down into more basic components. These components are known as Fano varieties—named after Italian mathematician Gino Fano—and understanding them can help mathematicians make major discoveries.

There's just one problem. Fano varieties are notoriously difficult to categorize.

That's what scientists at the Imperial College of London discovered when they set out to create a "periodic table of shapes" more than a decade ago. Similar to how elements are grouped together with like elements on the periodic table, this geometric table aims to group related Fano varieties together. [More (sic)] easier said than done.

So, the Imperial team—which also includes scientists from the University of Nottingham—turned to AI and machine learning to help speed up the process. The results of this novel method were published in the journal Nature Communications in early September.

"Fano varieties are basic building blocks in geometry—they are 'atomic pieces' of mathematical shapes," the study reads.

[...] Fano discovered the first of these "atomic" shapes back in the 1930s. More have been discovered since, but so far, they lack any organizing principle. Once categorized in a periodic table defined by a shape's unique quantum period, gaps could help tell mathematicians where new shapes could be discovered (much like what the periodic table does for chemists and physicists).

Original Submission