The Washington Post reports: On Uranus and Neptune, scientists forecast rain storms of solid diamonds. The gems form in the hydrocarbon-rich oceans of slush that swath the gas giants' sold cores. Scientists have long speculated that the extreme pressures in this region might split those molecules into atoms of hydrogen and carbon, the latter of which then crystallize to form diamonds. These diamonds were thought to sink like rain through the ocean until they hit the solid core. But no one could prove that this would really work -- until now.
Cosmos reports: The Matter in Extreme Conditions instrument at SLAC gives scientists the tools to investigate the extremely hot, dense matter at the centers of stars and giant planets... A team led by Dominik Kraus from the Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf research centre in Germany subjected plastic to shockwaves by exposing it to the intense energy produced by SLAC's X-ray free-electron laser, known as the Linac Coherent Light Source. The experiment caused almost all the carbon atoms in the plastic to combine into diamond-like structures a few nanometers wide... Astronomers think that the forces at work deep in the frozen mantles of Uranus and Neptune are likely so powerful that each of the diamonds formed could weigh millions of carats. It is also possible that the solid cores of both planets are coated with a thick diamond outer layer.
The experiment also suggests an easier (and cleaner) way to produce diamonds in a lab, which can then be used for semiconductors, drill bits and solar panels.

An anonymous reader shares a new crowdfunding site built on open source principles to "remove the money element from project creation" so creators "don't have to take extreme actions such as quitting their jobs or compromising on their ideas because of investor demands. Because of the nature of crowdsourcer.io projects, project creators can remain as ambitious as funded projects and get all the contributors they need to make their idea a reality."

From the site: Crowdsourcer.io is an alternative crowd sourcing platform that allows developers and designers alike to create or join in on software related projects, build up their contribution and earn an income from the final product. Think of Crowdsourcer.io as something between open source software creation and Kickstarter start ups, a new crowd sourcing alternative, in its purest form"
The site's creator recently answered questions on Reddit, saying they'd spent years fine-tuning the idea, and writing that "It's really focussed on people who don't want to quit their job to form their own software company, and don't want to become embroiled in debt or other financing." A note at the bottom of the site adds that "Crowdsourcer.io is young. We want your ideas!"

"While plenty of countries have dabbled in drone delivery, no program has matched the scale and impact of what's unfolding in Rwanda and now, Tanzania." An anonymous reader quotes CNN: The drones will fly themselves, far from the view of humans -- a move that's not yet legal in the U.S... In early 2018, Tanzania's government will begin using drones to deliver medical supplies such as blood and vaccines to remote areas. The government expects to save lives thanks to faster delivery of medical supplies. Rwanda has already completed 1,400 similar deliveries. "Everyone has this paradigm that robotics and artificial intelligence starts in the U.S., made by rich people for rich people. It couldn't be farther from the truth," said Keller Rinaudo, CEO of Zipline, which is supplying the drones. "There's a major shift [occurring] where it's not about the country with the most resources; it's more about the countries with modern regulatory reform and a willingness to try new things."

Tanzania will open four drone distribution centers with Silicon Valley startup Zipline, providing more than 100 drones and 2,000 flights a day. It's also discussing a partnership with another drone company... Previously, the government delivered medical supplies only four times a year due to costs. Bwanakunu envisions several deliveries per week including for emergencies... This isn't the first time East Africa has been a step in front of the "developed world." "We were ahead with mobile money too," said Bwanakunu, referring to M-PESA, which allows for money to be sent through cell phones. "If today trying this technology will save a human life, why not?"
Each drone is equipped with "a parachute that deploys if that anything goes wrong."

An anonymous reader quote BleepingComputer: Three researchers from New York University (NYU) have published a paper this week describing a method that an attacker could use to poison deep learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. Researchers based their attack on a common practice in the AI community where research teams and companies alike outsource AI training operations using on-demand Machine-Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) platforms. For example, Google allows researchers access to the Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine, which research teams can use to train AI systems using a simple API, using their own data sets, or one provided by Google (images, videos, scanned text, etc.). Microsoft provides similar services through Azure Batch AI Training, and Amazon, through its EC2 service.

The NYU research team says that deep learning algorithms are vast and complex enough to hide small equations that trigger a backdoor-like behavior. For example, attackers can embed certain triggers in a basic image recognition AI that interprets actions or signs in an unwanted way. In a proof-of-concept demo of their work, researchers trained an image recognition AI to misinterpret a Stop road sign as a speed limit indicator if objects like a Post-it, a bomb sticker, or flower sticker were placed on the Stop sign's surface. In practice, such attacks could be used to make facial recognition systems ignore burglars wearing a certain mask, or make AI-driven cars stop in the middle of highways and cause fatal crashes.

An anonymous reader quotes the AP: Britain is set to conduct road trials of self-driving trucks, involving a "platoon" of vehicles controlled by a driver in the front. The Department for Transport said Friday that up to three trucks will travel in convoy, connected by Wi-Fi and with braking and acceleration controlled by the lead vehicle. Officials say the formation saves fuel and reduces carbon emissions, because the lead truck pushes air out of the way, making the others more efficient.

NASA claims they set a record Monday with 40 million views of their eclipse coverage (12.1 million unique) and more than 2 million simultaneous views. Now Slashdot reader xmas2003 asks: "What did /.'ers do to experience this rare incredibly cool event and how did it turn out?" SmarterEveryDay Destin gets great geek cred for watching the ISS transit the eclipsed sun [YouTube] while we were fortunate to have an incredible experience on 40 acres of farmland watching the Total Solar Eclipse near Tryon, Nebraska -- here's a complete video of [a darkening crowd watching] the totality event from the middle of nowhere. While the pics/video are cool, the real-life experience of actually being there in person is even 100X better -- highly recommend you try to attend a future total solar eclipse!.
In my town it was cloudy all morning -- though I got a postcard from friends experiencing "the path of totality" in Idaho City. But how about you? How did you experience this week's solar eclipse?

An anonymous reader quotes the Bay Area Newsgroup: A Bay Area startup that promised to give music lovers state-of-the-art wireless earphones is instead closing its doors, becoming the latest in a string of crowd-funded companies to take customers' money and shut down without shipping a product. San Francisco-based Kanoa ran out of capital and shut down this week, leaving in the lurch scores of customers who paid $150 or more to pre-order high-tech earphones they never received. The company emailed customers on Wednesday to break the bad news, directing them to a letter posted on the Kanoa website...

Kanoa is just the latest local crowdfunded company to disappoint customers. Last summer San Francisco-based startup Skully imploded, to the dismay of 3,000 customers who paid $1,500 each for high-tech motorcycle helmets they never received. In February, Lily Robotics, another San Francisco-based startup, filed for bankruptcy. Unlike Skully and Kanoa, Lily promised to reimburse the more than 60,000 customers who paid for but never received its camera drones.
In a letter online the company claimed they are "in negotiations" with potential investors, "and also large tech companies on an acquisition" -- but unless and until funding materializes, "we do not have enough capital to stay operational..."

"We know you are disappointed, and can only ask that you understand that we genuinely tried."

"After initial indications the main event would commence at 11:15 p.m ET, it didn't get started until nearly one hour later," reports Variety. An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Saturday's much hyped fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and UFC champion Conor McGregor drew fans from all walks of life, even those who'd never typically watch a standard boxing match. But when some of those fans settled in to watch the spectacle, beverage and snacks in hand, they found themselves in a world of hurt. Watching the fight wasn't cheap (nearly $100 on pay-per-view), so naturally, those who had technical issues as fight time neared -- on whatever platform -- were fighting mad. At 6:28 p.m. PT, as the undercard matches preceding the event aired, the UFC admitted on Twitter it was having technical issues with its Fight Pass streaming service due to the overwhelming interest in the bout.
ESPN confirms that the much-hyped event was "delayed due to pay-per-view outages."

An anonymous reader quotes DW: Earlier this year, with no shortage of publicity, Berlin police found volunteers to participate in a test of a prototype facial-recognition system at Sudkreuz station. The system seeks to match images of people on CCTV cameras with pictures of the volunteers in a test database. Volunteers also wear transponders providing information about their whereabouts. Comparing the two sets of data will give a good indication of whether the technology is of any use.
Another DW article reports the six-month test is attracting criticism: Germany's interior minister is pleased with the initial results, but critics are wary of increased surveillance... The 300 testers who volunteered for the project carry a transponder that apparently only transmits data on ambient temperature, battery status and signal strength, according to the project staff member in the Sudkreuz station control room who explained the technology to [German Interior Minister Thomas] de Maiziere. But [activist Paul] Gerstenkorn contends the angle and acceleration of the testers are recorded as well... For German Data Protection Commissioner Andrea Vosshoff, the fact that active and not passive technology is being used is going too far. Unlike a passive chip, the transponder constantly transmits information that anyone can collect with the help of freeware available on the internet.

Vosshoff says the police have not "sufficiently" informed the testers, and called for the project to be temporarily halted...The interior minister has vehemently defended the project, saying the technology is not being used to catch petty criminals such as shoplifters, but terrorists and serious offenders. Four weeks into the test phase, De Maiziere has praised its "surprising accuracy" - specifically referring to people recognized by the software whose pictures are already stored in police databases. According to Germany's federal police force, pictures of all other passers-by captured by the surveillance cameras are "immediately deleted." After the six-month trial phase in Berlin, a decision will be made on whether automatic facial recognition will be implemented nationwide in Germany's train stations and other public spaces.

"It is much too easy to connect devices and industrial equipment to the internet," writes an anonymous Slashdot reader. But what's the solution -- and who's to blame for the abundance of insecure IoT devices? Network World examined the conclusions in a paper titled "The Internet of Hackable Things" [PDF]. The authors say the IoT security problem is not a technological one; it's cultural... "A security culture is nearly non-existent in our society... developers must be educated to adopt the best practices for securing their IoT devices within the particular application domain; the general public must be educated to take security seriously, too, which among other things will fix the problem of not changing default password."
The anonymous reader who submitted this story argued that "IoT product makers do not need a deeply skilled team because component makers have made it so easy to connect anything to the internet. Maybe the responsibility for strong security should rest with chip makers like Intel, Freescale and Qualcomm." Leave your own opinions in the comments. Who is ultimately responsible for IoT security?

An anonymous reader quotes Wired: Last year, well over a third of the incidents assessed by security firm Carbon Black and its partners involved some sort of PowerShell component. But as network defenders catch on to Microsoft's recent release of additional PowerShell protections, the attack sequences that exploit PowerShell are finding some long-overdue resistance... PowerShell 5.0, released last year, added a full suite of expanded logging tools... While it's no panacea, and doesn't keep attackers out, the renewed focus on logging aids flagging and detection. It's a baseline step that helps remediation and response after an attack is over, or if it persists long-term... And PowerShell's recent defense improvements go beyond logs. The framework also recently added "constrained language mode," to create even more control over what commands PowerShell users can execute... The security industry at large has also made strides to determine what baseline normal activity for PowerShell looks like, since deviations could indicate malicious behavior.
Lee Holmes, Microsoft's principal software design engineer for PowerShell, says they've been "laser-focused on security since the very first version," adding that they're now moving towards a more enlightened approach.

"You can focus harder on protecting against breaches and defense in depth, but the enlightened approach is to assume breach and build the muscle on detection and remediation -- make sure that you're really thinking about security end-to-end in a holistic manner."

"Scientists possibly detected an entirely different type of gravitational wave [source]," writes schwit1. "Gossip over potential detection of colliding neutron stars has astronomers in a tizzy," reports Nature: Astrophysicists may have detected gravitational waves last week from the collision of two neutron stars in a distant galaxy -- and telescopes trained on the same region might also have spotted the event. Rumours to that effect are spreading fast online, much to researchers' excitement. Such a detection could mark a new era of astronomy: one in which phenomena are both seen by conventional telescopes and 'heard' as vibrations in the fabric of space-time. "It would be an incredible advance in our understanding," says Stuart Shapiro, an astrophysicist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign...

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Louisiana and Washington state has three times detected gravitational waves -- ripples in the fabric of space-time -- emerging from colliding black holes. But scientists have been hoping to detect ripples from another cosmic cataclysm, such as the merger of neutron stars, remnants of large stars that exploded but were not massive enough to collapse into a black hole.
One astronomer tweeted last week that "merging neutron-neutron star is the initial call," while Nature adds that the same rumor had already been circulating privately, according to "some astronomers who do not want to be identified."

Friday Ligo announced cautiously that "We are working hard to assure that the candidates are valid gravitational-wave events, and it will require time to establish the level of confidence needed to bring any results to the scientific community and the greater public. We will let you know as soon we have information ready to share."

As in past years, "Open source is professionalizing, and employers are seeking staff with demonstrable skills," says the executive director of the Linux Foundation, describing the results of a new study with Dice.com. An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: According to the two groups' 2017 Open Source Jobs Survey and Report, "Not only do 89 percent of hiring managers report difficulty in finding qualified talent for open source roles, but 58 percent report needing to hire more open source professionals in the next six months than in the six months prior"... Seventy percent of employers, up from 66 percent in 2016, are hunting for workers with cloud experience. Web technologies placed second, with 67 percent of hiring managers hunting for workers with JavaScript and related skills. This is up five percent from last year's 62 percent. The demand for Linux talent remains strong. Sixty-five percent of hiring managers are looking for Linux experts. That's down slightly from 2016's 71 percent.
The three most common positions that they're looking to fill are developer, DevOps engineer, and systems administrator, according to the study, and "a growing number of companies (60 percent) are looking for full-time hires, compared with 53 percent last year.

"Nearly half (47 percent) of companies will pay for employees to become open-source certified."

tedlistens writes: Independent studies have showed that when deployed correctly -- according to "guidelines" manufacturer Axon offers to police -- Tasers reduce injuries among both officers and the people they subdue. But amid a lack of official data about their use and effects, a new report by Reuters found 1,005 incidents in the U.S. in which people died after police stunned them with the electrical weapons, most since the early 2000s. The Taser was ruled to be a cause or contributing factor in 153 of those deaths -- far more than the 24 cases the company has counted. Reuters found that 9 in 10 of those who died were unarmed and one in four suffered from mental illness or neurological disorders; In 9 of every 10 incidents reviewed, the deceased was unarmed; More than 100 of the fatal encounters began with a 911 call for help during a medical emergency. Earlier this year, Axon rebranded, dropping the name Taser International to underscore its focus on body cameras and digital evidence, which is meant in part to add new transparency to fatal police encounters.

An anonymous reader quotes Phys.org: China is about to launch the Jinan Project, the world's first unhackable computer network, and a major milestone in the development of quantum technology... the network is planned to be fully operational by the end of August 2017... By launching the network, China will become the first country worldwide to implement quantum technology for a real life, commercial end. It also highlights that China is a key global player in the rush to develop technologies based on quantum principles, with the EU and the United States also vying for world leadership in the field.

The network, known as a quantum key distribution (QKD) network, is more secure than widely used electronic communication equivalents. Unlike a conventional telephone or internet cable, which can be tapped without the sender or recipient being aware, a QKD network alerts both users to any tampering with the system as soon as it occurs. This is because tampering immediately alters the information being relayed, with the disturbance being instantly recognisable. Once fully implemented, it will make it almost impossible for other governments to listen in on Chinese communications... It will be the world's longest land-based quantum communications network, stretching over 2,000 km.