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Submission + - Quantum Microscope 3D Simulator of Atoms Open Sourced (energywavetheory.com)

Submitted by atomicphysics
atomicphysics writes: The Quantum Microscope add-on for Blender has been released to open source. The free-to-download 3D simulator provides accurate modeling of molecules, atoms and their subatomic particles by using classical, Newtonian physics.

A contest begins September 1, 2020 for developers to enhance the add-on, or create a new simulator meeting project requirement to use classical physics for the quantum realm, with at least $15,000 in prizes being awarded over the next year.

Submission + - SPAM: Armed US Agents Enter Warehouse in Puerto Rico, Seize Hoarded Electric Equipment

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: On Saturday, A day after becoming aware of a massive store of rebuilding materials being held by the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, the U.S. federal government — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, along with their security detail — entered a Palo Seco warehouse owned by the public utility to claim and distribute the equipment, according to a spokesperson for the Corps.

Rumors of a tense standoff had been circulating on the island, but the encounter was confirmed to The Intercept in a statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Asked if the federal officers were armed when they entered the warehouse, USACE spokesperson Luciano Vera said they were indeed accompanied by security detail and quickly began distributing the material after seizing it. Vera declined to say whether there was a confrontation at the entrance, saying only that PREPA officials ultimately toured the warehouse along with the feds:

The federal government “began distributing [supplies] to contractors,” Vera said, including hard-to-find full-tension steel sleeves, critical to rebuilding. “We obtained several hundred of these sleeves on Saturday,” Vera added.

The armed encounter comes as around half of Puerto Ricans still remain without electricity well over 100 days after Hurricane Maria. As PREPA hoards crucial resources that could help remedy the island’s dire situation, the Puerto Rican government is attempting to annihilate the power provider’s only regulator.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Researchers create patterned stickers that can confuse AI image recognition (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by amxcoder
amxcoder writes: Researchers at Google were able to create little stickers with 'psychedelic' looking patters on them that could trick computer AI image classifying algorithms into mis-classifying images of objects that it would normally be able to recognize. The images on the stickers were created by the researchers using knowledge of features and shapes, patterns, and colors that the image recognition algorithms look for and focus on. The patterned stickers work by tricking the image recognition algorithm into focusing on, and studying the little pattern on the small sticker and ignoring the rest of the image, including the actual object in the picture. Image recognition algorithms work by attempting to weigh importance to parts of an image as higher than other parts so it can determine the subject object in the image. These stickers were created so that the algorithm finds them 'more interesting' than the rest of the image and will focus most of it's attention on analyzing the pattern and giving the rest of the image content a lower importance, thus ignoring it or confusing it.

Submission + - 9% of Popular Websites Use Anti-Adblock Scripts (bleepingcomputer.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Around 9% of today's most popular websites deployed or are deploying anti-adblock scripts in an effort to maintain advertising revenues and fight off the rise in the adoption of ad-blocking extensions. The percentage comes from a research project carried out by academics from the University of Iowa and University of California-Riverside that reviewed the use of anti-adblock scripts in the past five years.

For their project, researchers scanned cached website copies stored in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine for today's Alexa Top 5,000 Websites, looking for the two anti-adblock scripts named above. Researchers looked for two of the most popular anti-adblock solutions, namely Anti-Adblock Killer List and the Combined EasyList (Adblock Warning Removal List + Anti-Adblock sections in EasyList).

"We find that the Anti-Adblock Killer List triggers on 8.7% websites and the Combined EasyList only triggers on 0.4% websites currently. We further test both anti-adblock filter lists on Alexa top-100K live websites. We find that the Anti-Adblock Killer List triggers on 5.0% websites and the Combined EasyList only triggers on 0.2% websites," researchers said.

Submission + - NASA Launches a Mission To Study the Border of Earth and Space (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A new NASA mission, the first to hitch a ride on a commercial communications satellite, will examine Earth's upper atmosphere to see how the boundary between Earth and space changes over time. GOLD stands for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk, and the mission will focus on the temperature and makeup of Earth's highest atmospheric layers. Along with another upcoming satellite, called ICON, GOLD will examine how weather on Earth — and space weather caused by the sun — affects those uppermost layers. GOLD, which will inspect the ultraviolet radiation that the upper atmosphere releases, will also be the first to take comprehensive records of that atmospheric layer's temperature. The satellite carrying GOLD will orbit 22,000 miles (35,400 kilometers) above Earth in a geostationary orbit, which means GOLD will stay fixed with respect to Earth's surface as the satellite orbits and the world turns. GOLD will pay particularly close attention to Earth's thermosphere, which is the gas that surrounds the Earth higher than 60 miles (97 km) up, and the layer called the ionosphere, which forms as radiation from the sun strips away electrons from particles to create charged ions. And although solar flares and other interactions on the sun do have a strong impact on those layers, scientists are learning that Earth's own weather has an impact on the layers, too.

Submission + - Linus Torvalds says Intel needs to admit it has issues with CPUs (itwire.com)

Submitted by troublemaker_23
troublemaker_23 writes: Linux creator Linus Torvalds has had some harsh words for Intel in the course of a discussion about patches for two bugs that were found to affect most of the company's processors. Two flaws — dubbed Meltdown and Spectre — were revealed this week in Intel processors made since 1995 and companies have been hustling to offer fixes and workarounds.

Submission + - The FCC Is Preparing To Weaken the Definition of Broadband (dslreports.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act, the FCC is required to consistently measure whether broadband is being deployed to all Americans uniformly and "in a reasonable and timely fashion." If the FCC finds that broadband isn't being deployed quickly enough to the public, the agency is required by law to "take immediate action to accelerate deployment of such capability by removing barriers to infrastructure investment and by promoting competition in the telecommunications market." Unfortunately whenever the FCC is stocked by revolving door regulators all-too-focused on pleasing the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast — this dedication to expanding coverage and competition often tends to waver.

What's more, regulators beholden to regional duopolies often take things one-step further — by trying to manipulate data to suggest that broadband is faster, cheaper, and more evenly deployed than it actually is. We saw this under former FCC boss Michael Powell (now the top lobbyist for the cable industry), and more recently when the industry cried incessantly when the base definition of broadband was bumped to 25 Mbps downstream, 4 Mbps upstream. We're about to see this effort take shape once again as the FCC prepares to vote in February for a new proposal that would dramatically weaken the definition of broadband. How? Under this new proposal, any area able to obtain wireless speeds of at least 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps would be deemed good enough for American consumers, pre-empting any need to prod industry to speed up or expand broadband coverage.

Comment Re:That wasn't the question (Score 3, Interesting) 461

by Wapiti-eater (#46823141) Attached to: Supreme Court OKs Stop and Search Based On Anonymous 911 Tips
Why would the driver have to consent? The drive for "public security" has already diminished our rights to the point that as soon as the officer states he 'smelled weed', he has all the consent he needs. Maybe you need to take a look at reality and hopefully begin to understand the severe slope we're already sliding down. What's next? Paying kids with new uniforms to turn in their parents for cussing?

Comment The question is, "What is Amateur Radio" (Score 2) 371

by Wapiti-eater (#44112865) Attached to: FCC Considering Proposal For Encrypted Ham Radio
Are we an Emergency Service? No - we are not. That is what part 90 is for.

We are hobbyist, enthusiasts that practice the radio art and sciences. As such, we develop the skills and methods to make things work, when all else fails.

We fill in, when asked, when established systems fail. We are not a "First Responder" that jumps into any and every situation with our "magic" HTs to save the day.

If you want to be part of an EmComm organization, join one - they have their own radio service under part 90 rules. They use encryption there - and it works well.

Thankfully, the public communications community has noticed when things have gone bad and we've stepped in to help. They've evolved their systems to be more robust and survive events. No, they're not perfect and there will be opportunity to help out in the future. But, we provide that help out of civic duty. Not as an EmComm service.

Allowing encryption on the Amateur Bands will further dilute the separation between our hobbyest, experimental service and established EmComm services. When those EmComm service start asking for more bandwidth to support their growth - where do you think they're going to look? If we're already providing EmComm services - predeployed, dedicated, secure encrypted, agency specific communications - what shouldn't they have our bands?

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