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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The CEO of Australian telco Optus, Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, has resigned after deciding it was in the best interests of her former employer.

Bayer Rosmarin's resignation follows a November 8 outage that saw around ten million Australians unable to connect to any Optus services for fourteen hours.

Optus hid its explanation of the outage in an FAQ at the bottom of this page, where the incident is described as follows:

At around 4.05am Wednesday morning, the Optus network received changes to routing information from an international peering network following a software upgrade. These routing information changes propagated through multiple layers in our network and exceeded preset safety levels on key routers. This resulted in those routers disconnecting from the Optus IP Core network to protect themselves.

It was later revealed that the source of the routing information was Singtel, the Singapore-based telco that owns Optus. The Optus network connects to Singtel internet exchanges in North America and Asia.

Optus later blamed the incident on default settings in its Cisco routers, which couldn't cope with the volume of changes sent by Singtel as they exceeded safety limits. Optus's submission explaining the outage is, however, silent on or why its network accepted such changes without testing their impact on its kit – a common and sensible approach to operating mission-critical infrastructure.

[...] The danger Optus's outage posed, and the mass inconvenience, earned Bayer Rosmarin an appearance before a parliamentary committee.

[...] Yet Bayer Rosmarin did not do well in her appearance regarding the outage, revealing that the nation's second-largest telco's disaster recovery regime did not envisage a total network outage. Another admission was that the former CEO's personal DR strategy had evolved to see her carry SIM cards for Australia's two rival mobile networks.

[...] Left unanswered is how Singtel poisoned the network in the first place, amid an undercurrent of concern that a foreign carrier – even one from a friend like Singapore – had deep enough access to an Australian network to bring it down.

Original Submission

owl writes:

https://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/2019/02/22/the-history-behind-aspirin-81/

Patients often come into clinics on a grocery list of medications. Common prescriptions include lisinopril 20 mg, amlodipine 2.5 mg, metformin 500 mg, and aspirin 81 mg. One dosage stands out from the others. While most medications come in dosages of round numbers or common decimals, low-dose aspirin has a standard dose of 81 mg.

Why is aspirin available at a dose of 81 milligrams? The answer is historical in nature and is rooted in a medieval and now defunct system of measurement called the apothecary system of weights and measures. The full explanation of aspirin 81 requires some background information on the apothecary system and is best explained in comparison to the more familiar metric system.

Original Submission

taylorvich writes:

https://phys.org/news/2023-11-soot-pollution-coal-fired-power-deadly.html

Burning coal to generate electricity is on the way out in the United States, but the nation's long dependence on the fossil fuel took a devastating toll.

A new study determined for the first time that soot pollution from coal-fired power plants is more dangerous than soot from other sources. During the past two decades, the researchers found, coal plant soot contributed to the deaths of at least 460,000 Americans, including 25% of all deaths among Medicare recipients before 2009.

Only Pennsylvania, New York and Ohio recorded more deaths associated with coal plant pollution than the 25,000 deaths in Illinois during the period studied.

An interactive map accompanying the study, published in the journal Science, reveals glimmers of hope amid the grim statistics.

Deaths attributed to coal plant soot have declined dramatically in recent years as utilities closed scores of their dirtiest plants and cleaned up others—changes prompted by more stringent federal clean air regulations, competition from less expensive gas-fired power plants and legal pressure from environmental groups.

"The fact that they estimated more than 40,000 deaths a year two decades ago and the number is now down to 1,600 a year is a pretty remarkable success story," said Jonathan Levy, chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University, who wasn't involved in the study.

Soot, also known as particulate matter, is a byproduct of incomplete combustion and can be formed by chemical reactions between sulfur dioxide emitted by fossil fuel power plants and other compounds in the atmosphere. The type of soot that most concerns public health researchers—PM2.5—is so tiny that thousands of the fine particles could fit on the period at the end of this sentence.

Breathing even small amounts can inflame the lungs and trigger asthma attacks. Previous studies have linked soot exposure with heart attacks and premature death.

Journal Reference:
Lucas Henneman et al, Mortality risk from United States coal electricity generation, Science (2023). DOI: 10.1126/science.adf4915

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Simple ballpoint pen can write custom LEDs:

Researchers working with Chuan Wang, an associate professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, have developed ink pens that allow individuals to handwrite flexible, stretchable optoelectronic devices on everyday materials including paper, textiles, rubber, plastics and 3D objects.

In a paper published Aug. 7 in Nature Photonics, the team reports their simple and versatile fabrication approach to allow anyone to make a custom light-emitting diode (LED) or photodetector without the need for any specialized training or bulky equipment. The new handheld fabrication technology builds on earlier work by Wang and first author Junyi Zhao, a doctoral candidate in Wang's lab, in which they demonstrated a novel way to fabricate stretchable LEDs with an inkjet printer.

"Handwriting custom devices was a clear next step after the printer," Wang said. "We had the inks already, so it was a natural transition to take the technology we had already developed and modify it to work in regular ballpoint pens where it could be cheap and accessible to all."

Journal Reference:
Zhao, J., Lo, LW., Yu, Z. et al. Handwriting of perovskite optoelectronic devices on diverse substrates. Nat. Photon. 17, 964–971 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-023-01266-1

Original Submission

SomeGuy writes:

SFGate reports: As a major dust storm hit, the Google Maps app helpfully offered Nevada drivers on Interstate 15 an alternate route... into the middle of nowhere.

"Every car we were driving with was heading that direction..." Shelby Easler says in a follow-up TikTok video, "so we assumed this was going somewhere..."

Instead of a handy "alternate route," Google Maps was leading her and her two passengers "far off the major highway and into Nevada's fierce deserts on an off-roading trail." Easler's car were not the only bushwackers. In Shelby's viral TikTok, a trail of cars closely follows behind them. "The first driver that turned around talked to us to tell us that the road gets washed out the higher into the mountain you get, and we have to turn around since the path leads nowhere. He was in a huge truck and was just driving straight through the bushes and shrubs to let people know to turn around," Easler said.

The off-roading trail was apparently only wide enough for traffic in one direction, and attempting to return in that other direction, "We were driving over bushes and rocks and alot of the cars couldn't even make it," Easler says in the second video. "Which is kind of why our car broke down."

They told SFGate that ultimately "We had to leave the car in Vegas, and it got towed to the service center of a dealership. They said the rear, right tire was coming off, and the alignment was messed up too. Low-key a pretty expensive fix."

They eventually called the highway patrol to shut down the road that Google Maps was sending people to, because "With every car coming in, every single car was getting trapped."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

An estimated 50,000 shipwrecks can be found around the UK's coastline and have been acting as a hidden refuge for fish, corals and other marine species in areas still open to destructive bottom towed fishing, a new study has shown.

Many of these wrecks have been lying on the seabed for well over a century, and have served as a deterrent to fishers who use bottom towed trawling to secure their catches.

As a result, while many areas of the seabed have been damaged significantly in areas of heavy fishing pressure, the seabed in and around shipwrecks remains largely unblemished.

[...] Jenny Hickman, the study's lead author, completed the research as part of her MSc Marine Conservation program at the University of Plymouth.

She said, "The industrial use of bottom towed fishing gear has been commonplace since the 1800s, and has significantly altered marine communities and ecosystem services. Outside of legal protection, only areas inaccessible to trawlers are offered any protection, which is why shipwreck sites are rarely subject to trawling pressure. As many have been in situ for more than 100 years, they offer a baseline of ecological potential when trawling pressure is reduced or removed."

[...] Joe Richards, Scotland Project Manager for Blue Marine Foundation and one of the study's co-authors, said, "It has long been thought that shipwrecks could be playing an important role in providing sanctuary for marine species to utilize. It is brilliant to see this proven in this study. The research provides and insight into what might be possible if bottom towed fishing activity is reduced. This feeds into our wider understanding of shipwrecks' potential to contribute to ecosystem recovery and enhancement, given the sheer number found on the seabed."

[...] Researchers say the latest study demonstrates the importance of factoring wreck sites into future conservation plans, but also the benefits of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) status.

Journal Reference:
Jenny Hickman, Joe Richards, Adam Rees, Emma V. Sheehan, Shipwrecks act as de facto Marine Protected Areas in areas of heavy fishing pressure [open], Marine Ecology, First published: 22 November 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/maec.12782

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

A Florida judge, Reid Scott, has ruled that there's "reasonable evidence" to conclude that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk knew of defects in Autopilot systems and failed to fix them. Testimony from Tesla engineers and internal documents showed that Musk was "intimately involved" in Tesla's Autopilot program and "acutely aware" of a sometimes-fatal defect—where Autopilot repeatedly fails to detect cross traffic, Scott wrote.

"Knowing that the Autopilot system had previously failed, had limitations" and, according to one Tesla Autopilot systems engineer, "had not been modified, Tesla still permitted the 'Autopilot' system to be engaged on roads that encountered areas of cross traffic," Scott wrote.

Because a jury could perhaps consider that a "conscious disregard or indifference to the life" of Tesla drivers, Scott granted a motion to seek punitive damages to Kim Banner, whose husband Jeremy was killed in 2019 when his "Model 3 drove under the trailer of an 18-wheeler big rig truck that had turned onto the road, shearing off the Tesla's roof," Reuters reported. Autopilot allegedly failed to warn Jeremy or respond in any way that could have avoided the collision, like braking or steering the vehicle out of danger, Banner's complaint said.

[...] Scott noted that Tesla's marketing of Autopilot is "important" in this case, pointing to a 2016 video that's still on Tesla's website, where Tesla claimed "the car is driving itself." The video, Scott wrote, shows the car navigating scenarios "not dissimilar" to the cross-traffic encounter with a truck that killed Banner's husband.

"Absent from this video is any indication that the video is aspirational or that this technology doesn’t currently exist in the market," Scott wrote.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The transaction would represent the most expensive sale of a privately owned software company in history, and was flagged as a concern by 16 member states of the European Union in February, such is the lack of credible alternatives to Adobe on the market.

The EC leaned in for an in-depth investigation of the merger in August, and late on Friday evening - in the Euro time zone - it delivered the damning preliminary verdict in a Statement of Objections.

"As a result of this in-depth investigation, the commission reached the preliminary conclusion that the transaction may significantly reduce competition in the global markets," the EC said.

[...] By erasing Figma as a competitive hurdle, Adobe would also tighten its grip on the supply of vector and raster editing tools, the EC added.

"Figma already exerts a significant constraining influence on Adobe's vector editing tool, Adobe Illustrator, as well as on Adobe's raster editing tool, Photoshop. Moreover, absent the transaction, Figma is significantly likely to enter these markets and grow into an effective competitive force," it said.

[...] Adobe had wanted to get the deal done by the close of this calendar year but that is now definitely not going to be the case, with the case files to be publicly updated in February.

In October, Adobe told us of the CMA investigation: "We remain confident in the merits of the case as Figma's product design is an adjacency to Adobe's core creative products and Adobe has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space.”

[...] “The combination of Adobe and Figma will deliver significant value to customers by making product design more accessible and efficient, reimagining creative capabilities on the web and creating new categories of creativity and productivity.

"We remain confident in the merits of our case, as Figma’s product design is an adjacency to Adobe’s core creative products and Adobe has no meaningful plans to compete in the product design space. We will continue to engage constructively with the European Commission to address their concerns and are confident we can address them.”

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

One summer morning, Le Thi Hong Mai's home collapsed into a river in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, where shoreline erosion caused by sand mining and hydropower dams threatens hundreds of thousands of people.

Sand—needed to produce concrete—is the world's second most exploited natural resource after water, and its use has tripled in the last two decades, according to the UN environment program.

Vietnam's "rice bowl" delta region, where the Mekong empties into the South China Sea, is predicted to run out of sand in just over a decade.

But losses to the riverbed are already devastating lives and harming the local economy.

[...] Over the past two decades, hydropower dams upstream on the Mekong have restricted the flow of sand to the delta.

And sand mining to feed Vietnam's construction boom is also fast depleting resources, according to a major WWF report published earlier this year.

[...] According to Vietnam's ministry of transport, the Delta region needs 54 million cubic meters of sand for six major national highways before 2025.

The river system can provide less than half, the ministry says.

[...] Vietnam banned exports of sand in all forms in 2017.

But given high domestic demand, the amount dredged still exceeds what comes downstream, Mekong expert Nguyen Huu Thien explained.

At the current extraction rate of 35-55 million cubic meters a year, there will be no more sand by 2035, according to the WWF-led study.

"These are the last grains of sand we are dredging," Thien warned.

[...] Half the delta could be gone by the end of the century, Thein warned.

"After that, the delta will disappear altogether and we will have to redraw our map and rewrite our geography books."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The first flight of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket seems to have a payload. Instead of launching a sports car, as SpaceX did with its first Falcon Heavy rocket, Jeff Bezos's space company will likely launch a pair of Mars probes for NASA.

NASA is aware of the risk of launching a real science mission on the first flight of a new rocket. But this mission, known by the acronym ESCAPADE, is relatively low cost. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers mission has a budget of approximately $79 million, significantly less than any mission NASA has sent to Mars in recent history.

This mission will use two spacecraft to measure plasma and magnetic fields around the red planet. With simultaneous observations from two locations around Mars, scientists hope to learn more about the processes that strip away atoms from the magnetosphere and upper atmosphere, which drive Martian climate change.

[...] Bradley Smith, director of launch services at NASA, said Monday that the ESCAPADE mission will "very likely be the very first launch of New Glenn." He told a NASA advisory committee that this would be an "incredible ambitious launch for New Glenn."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If you’ve ever embarrassed yourself by publicly sharing a part of your screen you weren’t supposed to, spare a thought for Mohammad Moniruzzaman, who’s alleged to have shown off the source code he stole from a former employer during a Microsoft Teams call with that same company. The incident has come to light in a lawsuit filed by Moniruzzaman’s old employer, automotive technology company Valeo, which is suing Nvidia — the company Moniruzzaman moved on to — and accusing it of having benefited from these stolen trade secrets.

Nvidia has spent the better part of a decade attempting to branch out into the automotive market. Valeo is alleging that Moniruzzaman “downloaded without authorization the entirety of Valeo’s advanced parking and driving assistance systems source code” in early 2021, along with “scores of Valeo Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, and Excel spreadsheets explaining various aspects of the technology” before leaving to join Nvidia in August that year. 

This alleged theft came to light in March the following year, when employees from both Nvidia and Valeo were on a call together working on a joint parking assistance project for an unnamed automotive parts maker. Nvidia had won the contract to develop software on the project, while Valeo was providing ultrasonic sensor hardware. The lawsuit claims: 

“On March 8, 2022, one of these videoconference meetings was scheduled. Mr. Moniruzzaman, now employed by Nvidia, attended the videoconference call… and shared his computer screen during the call. When he minimized the PowerPoint presentation he had been sharing, however, he revealed one of Valeo’s verbatim source code files open on his computer. So brazen was Mr. Moniruzzaman’s theft, the file path on his screen still read “ValeoDocs.” Valeo participants on the videoconference call immediately recognized the source code and took a screenshot before Mr. Moniruzzaman was alerted of his error. By then it was too late to cover his tracks.”

The lawsuit goes on to state that German police “discovered Valeo documentation and hardware pinned on the walls of Mr. Moniruzzaman’s home office” when they raided his home as part of a criminal investigation, and that Valeo’s software and documents were found on his Nvidia computer when it was seized by investigators. Moniruzzaman admitted to stealing Valeo’s software when questioned by German police, according to the lawsuit.

[...] As a result, Valeo is seeking damages and an injunction to stop Nvidia and its employees from using or sharing its trade secrets.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Almost a week has passed since the OpenAI board fired CEO Sam Altman without explaining its actions. By Tuesday, the board reinstated Altman and appointed a new board to oversee the OpenAI operations. An investigation into what happened was also promised, something I believe all ChatGPT users deserve. We’re talking about a company developing an incredibly exciting resource, AI. But also one that could eradicate humanity. Or so some people fear.

Theories were running rampant in the short period between Altman’s ouster and return, with some speculating that OpenAI has developed an incredibly strong GPT-5 model. Or that OpenAI had reached AGI, artificial general intelligence that could operate just as good as humans. That the board was simply doing its job, protecting the world against the irresponsible development of AI.

It turns out the guesses and memes weren’t too far off. We’re not on the verge of dealing with dangerous AI, but a new report says that OpenAI delivered a massive breakthrough in the days preceding Altman’s firing.

The new algorithm (Q* or Q-Star) could threaten humanity, according to a letter unnamed OpenAI researchers sent to the board. The letter and the Q-Star algorithm might have been key developments that led to the firing of Altman.

Reuters, which has not seen the letter, the document was one factor. There’s apparently a longer list of grievances that convinced the board to fire Altman. The board worried about the company’s fast pace of commercializing ChatGPT advances before understanding the consequences.

OpenAI declined to comment to Reuters, but the company acknowledged project Q-Star in a message to staffers and the letter to the board. Mira Murati, who was the first interim CEO the board appointment after letting Altman go, apparently alerted the staff on the Q-Star news that was about to break.

It’s too early to tell whether Q-Star is AGI, and OpenAI was busy with the CEO drama rather than making public announcements. And the company might not want to announce such innovation anytime soon, especially if caution is needed.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

NASA has celebrated a shipment of half a kilo of plutonium oxide by the US Department of Energy, the largest since US production of plutonium-238 was restarted just over a decade ago.

Plutonium-238 (Pu-238) is essential for NASA missions using Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS). RPS makes use of the natural decay of Pu-238 to provide heat and electricity through systems such as the Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (MMRTG). As such, it's essential for missions where solar power is not an option.

NASA's recent Mars rovers use the fuel, and Perseverance uses an MMRTG to provide the robot with continuous heat and approximately 110 watts of electricity. Other missions, such as Cassini, also used the isotope, and Pu-238 power has kept the Voyager probes running decades after the launch.

However, supplies have been limited. Pu-238 is a byproduct of the process used to make nuclear weapons. As the need for new nuclear weapons has ebbed over the years, stockpiles of the fuel have dwindled. In 2015, Popular Science estimated that approximately 35 kg remained available to NASA, and of that, only 17 kg was good enough to use.

Hence the need to restart production. In 2010, the US Department of Energy submitted a report [PDF] to Congress with the goal of achieving an average production rate of 1.5 kg per year by 2015. According to NASA, that target won't be hit until at least 2026.

[...] RTGs are the only option for deep space missions as far as NASA is concerned. Two technologies that could have made more efficient use of Pu-238 – the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG) and the Enhanced Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (eMMRTG) – were axed by the agency due to technical, schedule, and cost issues.

NASA is having another crack with its Next Generation RTGs, which it claims will produce more than twice the power of an MMRTG with a significantly lower power degradation over time.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

It may be dated but contains many years of pranks!

Hackers' delight: A history of MIT pranks and hacks:

• MIT's legacy as one of the world's most prestigious technical universities has a curious byproduct — a history of clever pranks, or "hacks."

  Take a look at the University's long history of clever public disruptions.

  Latest: According to Rachel D., an MIT Admissions blogger, Lobby 7 was converted into the anti-gravity Battle Room from the novel 'Enders Game' on the same weekend the movie adaptation was released. Outside, Killian Court was draped with banners signiying three different armies in the sci-fi story: Grffin, Dragon, and Tiger.

• The day after the "Breaking Bad'' finale, students turned the school's Alchemist into an homage to Heisenberg, the alter-ego of show's main character.

• Unknown persons converted the scaffolding construction workers are using to install a new skylight in MIT's Great Dome into a Pac-Man reference. (Lights along the L-shaped scaffolding, representing the dots from the game, are seen better at night.) This may be the most recent stunt by MIT's student body, but it's far from the first.

• In 2012, MIT hackers turned the Green Building, the tallest building in Cambridge, into a giant, playable, full color game of Tetris. The project was the result of almost five years of planning, according to MIT's school newspaper.

• In April 2012, an odd addition appeared on the Stata Center roof in MIT.

  Hackers placed a Dalek, a cyborg from the British series "Doctor Who" on top of the school's Computer Science and Artificial Laboratory.

• In 2010, Cantabrigians noticed a strange sight atop an MIT building: A police call box reminiscent of the time machine used by science fiction hero Doctor Who.

• In 2009, MIT students built an upside-down room at the Wiesner building on Ames Street in Cambridge, according to the Cambridge Chronicle. The students furnished the room with a pool table, framed painting, and leather seats.

• The upside-down room even featured a cat.

Cheap drugs may be within reach thanks to copper chemistry discovery

taylorvich writes:

https://newatlas.com/medical/copper-oxygen-cheap-drugs/

Copper is not new to medicine, having been used in infection-fighting nanoparticles and implants, among many other innovations. However, it hasn't quite been used in the way some chemists from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have achieved, and it paves the way for simpler and much cheaper drug production in the future.

Using ozone, a form of oxygen, as a reagent and the metal as a catalyst, the scientists were able to break the carbon-carbon bonds of different types of organic molecules. The ozone broke the bonds into hydrocarbons called alkenes, and the copper catalyst coupled the broken bonds with nitrogen, forming carbon-nitrogen bonds, or molecules known as amines.

This process, known as aminodealkenylation, makes good use of an inexpensive metal that is in abundance, as opposed to other similar catalysts that would traditionally be used to develop amines.

"This has never been done before," said organic chemistry professor Ohyun Kwon. "Traditional metal catalysis uses expensive metals such as platinum, silver, gold and palladium, and other precious metals such as rhodium, ruthenium and iridium. But we are using oxygen and copper, one of the world's most abundant base metals."

Amines have strong interactions with molecules found in plants and animals, so are used heavily in the production of pharmaceuticals, plus agricultural chemicals like fertilizers. And, as their name suggests, amphetamine and dopamine are also amines.

Through this versatile combination, the team was able to modify hormones, pharmaceutical reagents, peptides and nucleosides into amines, indicating that this new method has broad application.