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Submission + - SPAM: Best Computer

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Apple iMac 27-inch (2020) is the latest iMac and may be the last Intel-powered all-in-one from Apple, but it couldn't have come at a better time. The new iMac boasts Intel 10th-generation processors, AMD Radeon Pro 5000 series graphics, and perhaps most importantly, a 1080p webcam – a big step up from the 720p cameras used in older iMacs. Other highlights of the 2020 iMac included enhanced speakers and optional nano-texture display that reduces glare.

The iMac design remains unchanged, complete with thick bezels around the screen and a prominent aluminum chin below the display, but the screen in question is a Retina 5K display, which has 5120 x 2880 pixels of colorful detail, as well as P3 wide color gamut support. It also has TrueTone color temperature adjustment, which automatically shifts the color on screen to look best for the ambient light in the room.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - US Navy Shoots Down Intercontinental Ballistic Missile for the First Time (popularmechanics.com) 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The US Navy destroyer USS John Finn intercepted a mock intercontinental ballistic missile early Tuesday, the Missile Defense Agency announced.

In the first-of-its-kind test, the Navy warship fired an SM-3 Block IIA, a weapon originally designed to eliminate midrange missiles, at the mock ICBM.

The agency's director, Vice Adm. Jon Hill, said in a statement that "we have demonstrated that an Aegis [ballistic missile defense]-equipped vessel equipped with the SM-3 Block IIA missile can defeat an ICBM-class target."

US missile defense systems would theoretically be able to stop a North Korean missile, but it is unclear how they would fare against more-advanced ICBM threats, such as those posed by China and Russia.

Submission + - FAA chief '100% confident' of 737 MAX safety as flights to resume (yahoo.com) 1

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) chief Steve Dickson is "100% confident" in the safety of the Boeing 737 MAX but says the airplane maker has more to do as it works to improve its safety culture.

Dickson on Wednesday signed an order to allow the best-selling plane to resume flights after it was grounded worldwide in March 2019 following two crashes that killed 346 people and led to Boeing's biggest crisis in decades.

The order will end the longest grounding in commercial aviation history and paves the way for Boeing to resume U.S. deliveries and commercial flights by the end of the year.

"We've done everything humanly possible to make sure" these types of crashes do not happen again," FAA Administrator Dickson told Reuters in a 30-minute telephone interview, adding the design changes "have eliminated what caused these particular accidents."

The FAA is requiring new training to deal with a key safety system called MCAS that is faulted for the two fatal crashes as well as significant new safeguards and other software changes.

Dickson suggested Boeing has more to do to improve safety.

"They have taken some actions, but it's going to take more then putting new processes in place and moving boxes around the organization chart. Cultural changes take a long time to take effect and we've got to be skeptical," he said.

Boeing said it is "committed to learning from our mistakes to build a safer future so accidents like this never happen again."

Submission + - Hurricanes Might Not Be Losing Steam As Fast As They Used To (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: [A] new study by Lin Li and Pinaki Chakraborty at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University focuses on a less-than-obvious question: what happens to hurricanes after landfall in a warming world? Once a storm moves over land, it loses the water vapor from warm ocean waters that fuel it, so it rapidly weakens. The total damage done depends in part on how quickly it weakens. The researchers examined a data set of all North Atlantic landfalling hurricanes between 1967 and 2018. The primary metric they were interested in was the rate the hurricane lost strength over the first 24 hours after landfall. Strength “decays” on an exponential curve, so they boiled this down to a mathematical parameter for decay time.

This parameter varies a fair bit from storm to storm depending on weather conditions and terrain, so the researchers compared averages for each half of the 50-year period. They found a pretty strong trend. In the earlier 25-year period, the average storm lost about 75 percent of its strength over the first day. In the latter half, the average storm lost only half of its strength. The researchers also analyzed sea surface temperatures in this area, which have obviously increased over the last 50 years. That means there’s a rough correlation between warmer ocean temperatures and hurricanes retaining strength after landfall. But is there a physical reason to believe the former caused the latter?

To test this, the researchers used a computer-model simulation of an idealized hurricane—that is, a hurricane in a homogenous virtual setting rather than above a specific location on the Earth. They simulated a series of hurricanes over increasingly warm water, with intensity capped at Category 4, and had each one make landfall at exactly the same strength. Landfall was simulated by suddenly cutting off the supply of water vapor at the bottom of the storm. Sure enough, the storms that had grown over a warmer ocean took longer to weaken. That means this isn’t a matter of, say, the back half of a storm still feeding on warm water while the front half crosses onto land. Instead, it appears that increased water vapor entrained within the storm itself helped sustain it. Another set of simulations confirmed this by also removing the water vapor at landfall—in this case, the storms all weakened identically.

Submission + - Occidental Is First US Oil Major To Target Net Zero Emissions (bnnbloomberg.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Occidental Petroleum Corp. became the first major U.S. oil producer to aim for net zero emissions from everything it extracts and sells, accelerating an industry trend that’s become commonplace in Europe. The Houston-based company announced a target to reach net zero emissions from its own operations by 2040 and an ambition to do the same from customers’ use of its products by 2050, Chief Executive Officer Vicki Hollub said during a conference call with analysts on Tuesday. The plan relies heavily on capturing carbon dioxide and burying it, a technology that’s so far been prohibitively expensive.

Occidental’s announcement is significant because the company has one of the biggest footprints in the Permian Basin, the sprawling oil field beneath Texas and New Mexico that produces more crude than any other region on the continent. [...] Occidental is aiming to reduce all three categories of emissions. Scope 1 involves pollution emanating directly from company operations, while Scope 2 includes indirect emissions from utilities selling power to the company, and similar sources. Scope 3 — the category most U.S. oil drillers have so far excluded — involves pollution farthest removed from a company’s control, such as consumers burning refined fuels like gasoline. It would be the first major U.S. oil company to target Scope 3 emissions, according to BloombergNEF.

Submission + - SPAM: Researchers 3-D print biomedical parts with supersonic speed

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Forget glue, screws, heat or other traditional bonding methods. A Cornell University-led collaboration has developed a 3-D printing technique that creates cellular metallic materials by smashing together powder particles at supersonic speed.

This form of technology, known as "cold spray," results in mechanically robust, porous structures that are 40% stronger than similar materials made with conventional manufacturing processes. The structures' small size and porosity make them particularly well-suited for building biomedical components, like replacement joints.

The team's paper, "Solid-State Additive Manufacturing of Porous Ti-6Al-4V by Supersonic Impact," published Nov. 9 in Applied Materials Today.

"We only focused on titanium alloys and biomedical applications, but the applicability of this process could be beyond that," Moridi said. "Essentially, any metallic material that can endure plastic deformation could benefit from this process. And it opens up a lot of opportunities for larger-scale industrial applications, like construction, transportation and energy."
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Submission + - SPAM: How to get root on Ubuntu 20.04 by pretending nobody's /home exploit 2

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: A vulnerability in GNOME Display Manager (gdm) could allow a standard user to create accounts with increased privileges, giving a local attacker a path to run code with administrator permissions (root).

Although certain conditions are necessary, the bug is easy to exploit. The process involves running a few simple commands in the terminal and modifying general system settings that do not require increased rights.

[spam URL stripped]...
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Scientists Find "Hell Planet" (zerohedge.com) 1

Submitted by walterbyrd
walterbyrd writes: On this brutal exoplanet hundreds of light-years away, oceans are filled with lava, rocks literally rain down on the surface, and howling winds break the sound barrier at thousands of miles per hour – making the hellish planet easily the most extreme ever discovered.

Submission + - Scientists 3D print microscopic Star Trek spaceship that moves on its own (cnn.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: A team of physicists at a university in the Netherlands have 3D-printed a microscopic version of the USS Voyager, an Intrepid-class starship from Star Trek.

The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.

Microswimmers are small particles that can move through liquid on their own by interacting with their environment through chemical reactions. The platinum coating on the microswimmers reacts to a hydrogen peroxide solution they are placed in, and that propels them through the liquid.

"By studying synthetic microswimmers, we would like to understand biological microswimmers," Samia Ouhajji, one of the study's authors, told CNN. "This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body."

Submission + - Apple Suspends Supplier For Using Illegal Student Labor In China (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has reprimanded one of its largest manufacturers after a Financial Times investigation found that thousands of student interns had worked overtime to assemble iPhones, in breach of Chinese law. After being contacted by the FT, Apple said it had stopped giving “new business” to Pegatron, its second-largest iPhone assembler after Foxconn. However, workers there said the factory was still manufacturing new products ahead of the holidays.

Pegatron, which has headquarters in Taiwan but has operations in China, is one of Apple’s largest manufacturers, producing iPhones, Macs, iPads and other components for several years. It has also faced recurring allegations about working conditions from campaign groups such as China Labor Watch. Until last month, thousands of student interns had assembled iPhones at Pegatron’s Kunshan plant and illegally worked overtime and night shifts, according to former interns and workers at the plant. Chinese government regulations prevent students from interning in factories if the work is unrelated to their studies. The alleged coercive use of students during the factory’s peak production periods mirrors the abuses previously found by the FT at Foxconn. Schools and local governments often collaborate to ensure labor supply for big companies in China. The latest disclosures follow the death last month of a worker in his mid-thirties after falling unconscious in a Pegatron dormitory.

Submission + - Voters Overwhelmingly Back Community Broadband In Chicago and Denver (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Voters in both Denver and Chicago have overwhelmingly thrown their support behind local community broadband projects, joining the hundreds of U.S. communities that have embraced home-grown alternatives to entrenched telecom monopolies. In Chicago, roughly 90 percent of voters approved a non-binding referendum question that asked: “should the city of Chicago act to ensure that all the city's community areas have access to broadband Internet?" The vote opens the door to the city treating broadband more like an essential utility, potentially in the form of community-run fiber networks.

In Denver, 83.5 percent of the city’s electorate cast ballots in favor of question 2H, which asked if the city should be exempt from a 2005 law, backed by local telecom monopolies, restricting Colorado towns and cities from being able to build their own local broadband alternatives. [...] "I think the margin in Chicago and Denver is remarkable," [said Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.] "When we work with communities where half the residents have a cable monopoly and the other half don't have any broadband, the demand for something better is strong among both populations."

Submission + - Starlink Maintains Performance In The Rain

Submitted by Rei
Rei writes: After having recently moved from a private to a public beta, the numbers of SpaceX Starlink users receiving their hardware (dubbed "Dishy McFlatface" by SpaceX) has increased, and along with it, the number of people reporting speed tests. Of particular interest has been performance in adverse weather. While the network is still being deployed, Pacific Northwest have been reporting rainy-weather download speeds ranging from ~95-140Mbps, upload from 9-18mbps, and ping times from 32-34ms. The upper range is surprisingly not that different from other November clear-weather data (which, while dramatically higher than September reports, is still supposed to improve over the coming year). The tolerance to adverse weather is likely due multiple satellite paths as well as phased array tuning overcoming wind buffeting. SpaceX does plan to add additional higher frequency V-band transmission to future Starlink satellites, but this should suffer more bad-weather attenuation than the current Ka/Ku-band.

Submission + - Former Astronaut Wins US Senate Seat Once Held By Republican John McCain (yahoo.com)

Submitted by DevNull127
DevNull127 writes: Mark Kelly will soon be the fourth NASA astronaut to serve in Congress, after flipping an Arizona Senate seat held by Republican Martha McSally. In a tweet posted Wednesday, he said he was "deeply honored" to have been elected and to serve in the seat once held by the late Sen. John McCain. A retired U.S. Navy captain and astronaut, Kelly has flown in four space missions, including the final mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour in 2011. He is married to former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, was shot and nearly killed in 2011.

His identical twin Scott Kelly is also a retired astronaut. The two participated in NASA's landmark "twins study," in which Scott spent a year aboard the space station while scientists collected Mark's physiological data back home for comparison...

When he is sworn in, Kelly will be the only active member of Congress to have flown in space. He is preceded by three former NASA astronauts: former Sens. John Glenn and Jack Schmitt and Rep. Jack Swigert. Two other former members of Congress — Sen. Jake Garn and Rep. Bill Nelson — have flown in space as payload specialists. Apollo 13 astronaut John "Jack" Swigert was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, but died of cancer before he could take office.

Submission + - AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processors Set A New Performance Bar Over Intel (hothardware.com)

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD made bold claims when the company unveiled its new Zen 3-based Ryzen 5000 series processors early last month. Statements like "historic IPC uplift" and "fastest for gamers" were waved about like flags of victory. However, as with most things in the computing world, independent testing is always the best way to validate claims. Today AMD lifted the embargo on 3rd party reviews and, in testing, AMD's new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs set a new performance bar virtually across the board, and one that Intel currently can't touch. There are four processors in the initial Ryzen 5000 series lineup, though it's a safe bet more will be coming later. The current entry point is the Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core / 8-thread processor, followed by the 8-core / 16-thread Ryzen 7 5800X, 12-core / 24 thread Ryzen 9 5900X, and the flagship 16-core / 32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X. All of these new CPUs are backwards compatible with AMD socket AM4 motherboards. In comparison to Zen 2, Zen 3 has a larger L1 branch target buffer and improved bandwidth through multiple parts of its pipeline with additional load/store flexibility. Where Zen 2 could handle 2 load and 1 store per cycle, Zen 3 can handle 3 load and 2 stores. All told, AMD is claiming an average 19% increase in IPC with Zen 3, which is a huge uplift gen-over-gen. Couple that IPC uplift with stronger multi-core scaling and a new unified L3 cache configuration, and Zen 3's performance looks great across a wide variety of workloads for both content creation and gaming especially. AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X, Ryzen 9 5900X, Ryzen 7 5800X and Ryzen 5 5600X will be priced at $799, $549, $449 and $299, respectively and should be on retail and etail shelves starting today.

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