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Comment Pre-crime is next (Score 1) 133

I expect they're going to follow this up with a "pre-crime" (ala "Minority Report") initiative. They'll monitor people's actions, manners, and postures in the store and learn to anticipate when somebody intends to steal. Then they'll arrest them before the crime is committed and build a case based on "the intention to steal."

Submission + - NASA REVEALS EXPERIMENTAL QUIET SUPERSONIC PLANE

pgmrdlm writes: In 1947, Captain Chuck Yeager became the first human to fly faster than the speed of sound. Piloting the X-1 supersonic plane, he left this goal in the dust of the craft he nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife.

Now, more than 70 years later, the U.S. Air Force has given the latest supersonic plane its experimental "X-plane" designation, NASA has revealed. The craft—now called the X-59 QueSST—is designed to shed the deafening sonic booms normally associated with super-fast airplanes.
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“With the X-59 you’re still going to have multiple shockwaves because of the wings on the aircraft that create lift and the volume of the plane. But the airplane’s shape is carefully tailored such that those shockwaves do not combine,” Ed Haering, a NASA aerospace engineer, said in an agency statement.

“Instead of getting a loud boom-boom, you’re going to get at least two quiet thump-thump sounds, if you even hear them at all,” he added.

http://www.newsweek.com/nasa-s...

Submission + - Westinghouse AP1000 Nuclear Reactor generates power

TopSpin writes: The Sanmen 1 nuclear reactor in Zhejiang Provice, China has been synchronized to the power grid and is generating power. The reactor has been under construction for nine years and became the first AP1000 in the world to achieve criticality on June 21, 2018. The AP1000 design recieved final design certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005 and has a net output of 1.117 GWe. Three other AP1000 reactors are under construction in China at the Sanmen and Haiyang sites and two reactors are under constrution in the US at the Vogtle Electric plant in Georgia.

On June 29 the Taishan 1 reactor became the first Areva EPR design to generate power. Four EPR reactors are under construction in Finland, France and China.

Comment Big Pharma might not allow it (Score 4, Insightful) 124

It strikes me as though there is a large number of oral medications and injectables all geared toward "managing" diabetes. That's a lot of revenue for somebody. Now to have something that (if it's true) can reduce the need for diabetic medications seems like it would make those drug manufacturers very unhappy.

Comment Re:I forget who (Score 2) 370

I think that's a valid concern although I don't see results as dire as what you're describing.

My impression is funds that invest in energy products/services are beginning to diversify into renewables. These people spend their days watching the markets in an attempt to anticipate changes. And I think the drop in demand for oil will be gradual; not sudden.

But I do agree re fossil fuels; esp. oil. Oil has been a world-wide exchange medium for several decades, but that is about to change. Coal, IMO, is on its way out. I just reviewed a potential investment (energy sector) where the group was clearly moving out of coal since more and more energy producers (aka utilities) are switching plants to gas. These utilities also seem to be looking at blending renewables into their grids.

And I know there are plants that are going to use coal, but I think those are meant more for PR than any actual trend.

So, again IMHO, anyone invested heavily in fossil fuels should be watching the markets.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: What advertising annoys you most? (thesun.co.uk)

shanen writes: Perhaps the real question is "Is there such a thing as bad publicity?" Do the annoying advertisers care at all about giving negative impressions to some potential customers?

I have three candidates to offer, but I'm more interested in learning about yours. By the way, I'm not surprised that two of my candidates come from the google:

(1) Banner ads in Gmail that are hard to ignore because they look so much like actual email.
(2) Forced ad videos inserted before YouTube videos, which are especially annoying because they always boost the audio to max.
(3) Posters stuck to power poles, especially the giant arrows that can confuse drivers and cause accidents.

Should email spam be included? I think not because in most cases it is NOT advertising. There is no real company selling any real product or service. Or maybe I should add that as another google-linked annoyance, since some of it does come from apparently real companies and ALL of it is delivered and supported by Gmail (as well as all other email systems)? This Ask Slashdot is supposed to focus on actual paid advertising from companies that are paying to annoy us...

Submission + - Wikipedia's Philip Cross problem (craigmurray.org.uk)

arnott writes: What happens when Wikipedia is used in ideological war with wikipedia's support ? 133,612 edits to Wikpedia have been made in the name of “Philip Cross” over 14 years. That’s over 30 edits per day, seven days a week. From Craig Murray, one of the people, whose wikipedia entry was edited by Philip Cross, a blog post:

Because the purpose of the “Philip Cross” operation is systematically to attack and undermine the reputations of those who are prominent in challenging the dominant corporate and state media narrative. particularly in foreign affairs. “Philip Cross” also systematically seeks to burnish the reputations of mainstream media journalists and other figures who are particularly prominent in pushing neo-con propaganda and in promoting the interests of Israel.

Looks like Philip Cross has Jimmy Wales's support.

Submission + - Unable to sign out from 'portal.office.com' is not considered a security issue (ytec.nl)

halfgaar writes: When logged in to https://portal.office.com/, users have the option to sign out, naturally. When you do, you're presented with an elegantly crafted exit screen saying that you are. But are you? If you go back to https://portal.office.com/, you're just logged in again. After contacting Microsoft's secure@microsoft.com bugreporting, the response was:

Thank you for contacting the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). After investigation we have determined this does not meet the bar. Success of this attack is predicated on a compromised session by having the auth cookie and the session ID cannot be brute forced. As such, this email thread has been closed and will no longer be monitored.

Maybe that's why they tell you to close your browser...

Submission + - SPAM: Christopher Nolan restores '2001: A Space Odyssey' the old-fashioned way

schwit1 writes: Christopher Nolan wants to show me something interesting. Something beautiful and exceptional, something that changed his life when he was a boy.

It's also something that Nolan, one of the most accomplished and successful of contemporary filmmakers, has persuaded Warner Bros. to share with the world both at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival and then in theaters nationwide, but in a way that boldly deviates from standard practice.

For what is being cued up in a small, hidden-away screening room in an unmarked building in Burbank is a brand new 70-mm reel of film of one of the most significant and influential motion pictures ever made, Stanley Kubrick's 1968 science-fiction epic "2001: A Space Odyssey."

Yes, you read that right. Not a digital anything, an actual reel of film that was for all intents and purposes identical to the one Nolan saw as a child and Kubrick himself would have looked at when the film was new half a century ago.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Calcium-Based MRI Sensor Enables More Sensitive Brain Imaging (mit.edu)

An anonymous reader writes: MIT neuroscientists have developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sensor that allows them to monitor neural activity deep within the brain by tracking calcium ions. Because calcium ions are directly linked to neuronal firing — unlike the changes in blood flow detected by other types of MRI, which provide an indirect signal — this new type of sensing could allow researchers to link specific brain functions to their pattern of neuron activity, and to determine how distant brain regions communicate with each other during particular tasks. In tests in rats, the researchers showed that their calcium sensor can accurately detect changes in neural activity induced by chemical or electrical stimulation, deep within a part of the brain called the striatum.

The new sensor consists of two types of particles that cluster together in the presence of calcium. One is a naturally occurring calcium-binding protein called synaptotagmin, and the other is a magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle coated in a lipid that can also bind to synaptotagmin, but only when calcium is present. Calcium binding induces these particles to clump together, making them appear darker in an MRI image. High levels of calcium outside the neurons correlate with low neuron activity; when calcium concentrations drop, it means neurons in that area are firing electrical impulses. The current version of the sensor responds within a few seconds of the initial brain stimulation, but the researchers are working on speeding that up. They are also trying to modify the sensor so that it can spread throughout a larger region of the brain and pass through the blood-brain barrier, which would make it possible to deliver the particles without injecting them directly to the test site.

Submission + - Volkswagen and Audi Cars Vulnerable to Remote Hacking (bleepingcomputer.com) 2

An anonymous reader writes: A Dutch cyber-security firm has discovered that in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) systems deployed with some car models from the Volkswagen Group are vulnerable to remote hacking. The vulnerabilities have been successfully tested and verified on Volkswagen Golf GTE and Audi A3 Sportback e-tron models. Researchers say they were able to hack the cars via both WiFi (remote vector) and USB (local vector) connections. Researchers hinted they could have also went after the cars' braking and acceleration system, but stopped due to fear of breaking VW's intellectual property on those systems.

"Under certain conditions attackers could listen in to conversations the driver is conducting via a car kit, turn the microphone on and off, as well as gaining access to the complete address book and the conversation history," Computest researchers said. "Furthermore, due to the vulnerability, there is the possibility of discovering through the navigation system precisely where the driver has been, and to follow the car live wherever it is at any given time," researchers added. VW deployed patches.

Submission + - Stack Overflow admits it isn't very welcoming and plans to change (stackoverflow.blog)

Paul Fernhout writes: Jay Hanlon wrote at the StackOverflow blog: "Let's start with the painful truth: Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. Our employees and community have cared about this for a long time, but we've struggled to talk about it publicly or to sufficiently prioritize it in recent years. And results matter more than intentions."

Comment Re: Fipronil (Score 1) 130

So do you not believe that this is the cause of colony collapse or do you not think that a huge decline in pollinators is a problem?

It seems like we'll soon be getting a reasonably definitive answer on that first question. If colonies rebound after the ban, then that's a pretty good indicator of causality. Likewise, if no rebound occurs over a period of time, such that persistent contamination is ruled out, then that also is an indicator that there may be something else at play.

Exactly! Where are my mod points when I need them? Thank you for a well-reasoned, insightful response. You made the most rational point without belittling or insulting anyone. I almost never see this anymore. You made my day.

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