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Submission + - New volcanic island off Japan (japantimes.co.jp)

Submitted by thephydes
thephydes writes: Japanese Coast Guard said on Monday that a new ivolcanic sland has appeared about 1200km south of Tokyo

"The new island is C-shaped with a diameter of approximately 1 kilometer. It was discovered after the volcano some 50 km south of Iwo Jima, part of the Ogasawara Islands in the Pacific Ocean, started erupting on Friday."

Submission + - SPAM: Windbreaks, surprisingly, could help wind farms boost power output

Submitted by labloke11
labloke11 writes: Windbreaks may sound like a counterintuitive idea for boosting the performance of a wind turbine. But physicists report that low walls that block wind could actually help wind farms produce more power.

Scientists already knew that the output of a single wind turbine could be improved with a windbreak. While windbreaks slow wind speed close to the ground, above the height of the windbreak, wind speeds actually increase as air rushes over the top. But for large wind farms, there’s a drawback. A windbreak’s wake slows the flow of air as it travels farther through the rows of turbines. That could suggest that windbreaks would be a wash for wind farms with many turbines.

But by striking a balance between these competing effects, windbreaks placed in front of each turbine can increase power output, new computer simulations suggest. It comes down to the windbreaks’ dimensions. Squat, wide barriers are the way to go, according to a simulated wind farm with six rows of turbines. To optimize performance, windbreaks should be a tenth the height of the turbine and at least five times the width of the blades, physicists report July 30 in Physical Review Fluids. Such an arrangement could increase the total power by about 10 percent, the researchers found. That’s the equivalent of adding an additional turbine, on average, for every 10 in a wind farm.

In the simulations, the wind always came from the same direction, suggesting the technique might be useful in locations where wind tends to blow one way, such as coastal regions. Future studies could investigate how this technique might apply in places where wind direction varies.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: AMD's Radeon RX 6600 XT Launched To Compete Versus NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: AMD officially unveiled the Radeon RX 6600 XT in late July but the cards have officially launched today, aimed at 1080p gaming. In a review at HotHardware, PowerColor is offering both a high-end Radeon RX 6600 XT Red Devil and its somewhat more mainstream "Fighter" branded counterpart, for example. Whereas AMD's reference Radeon RX 6600 XT offers a Game clock up to 2359MHz and a Boost clock of 25895MHz, the PowerColor Red Devil peaks at 2428MHz (Game) and 2607MHz (Boost). Those higher GPU clocks result in higher compute performance and fillrate, etc., but the memory configuration and frequency are the same — so in memory bandwidth constrained situations, performance won't be all that much different. Performance-wise, with most game titles that use traditional rasterization, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is clearly faster than the GeForce RTX 3060 and previous-gen cards like the Radeon RX 5700 XT or GeForce RTX 2060 Super. However, when you factor ray tracing into the equation, NVIDIA has a distinct and significant advantage still. The Radeon RX 6600 XT Fighter should sell for at or close to its $379 MSRP and PowerColor says that they should be readily available for gamers to purchase today.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Physicists Detect Strongest Evidence Yet of Matter Generated by Collisions of Li 1

Submitted by omfglearntoplay
omfglearntoplay writes: According to theory, if you smash two photons together hard enough, you can generate matter: an electron-positron pair, the conversion of light to mass as per Einstein's theory of special relativity.

It's called the Breit-Wheeler process, first laid out by Gregory Breit and John A. Wheeler in 1934, and we have very good reason to believe it would work.

But direct observation of the pure phenomenon involving just two photons has remained elusive, mainly because the photons need to be extremely energetic (i.e. gamma rays) and we don't have the technology yet to build a gamma-ray laser.

Now, physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory say they've found a way around this stumbling block using the facility's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) — resulting in a direct observation of the Breit-Wheeler process in action.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Oregon law allows students to graduate without proving they can write or do math (oregonlive.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: “For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level. The Oregonian/OregonLive asked the governor’s office when Brown’s staff notified the Legislature that she had signed the bill. Charles Boyle, the governor’s deputy communications director, said the governor’s staff notified legislative staff the same day the governor signed the bill. Boyle said in an emailed statement that suspending the reading, writing and math proficiency requirements while the state develops new graduation standards will benefit ‘Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.’ ‘Leaders from those communities have advocated time and again for equitable graduation standards, along with expanded learning opportunities and supports,’ Boyle wrote.”

Submission + - SPAM: Dr. Mercola to remove articles and archives in loss to free speech 1

Submitted by dublin
dublin writes: Dr. Joe Mercola has announced (also here in case that is also removed from his site) that he will be removing all articles and archives from his site in 48 hours, and that future posts will remain posted for only another 48 hours. It's unclear if all of the content on the site (and much of it was uncontroversial and of high quality) will be archived effectively elsewhere. (Is archive.org saving everything?)

Like him or hate him, Mercola was unafraid to tread in areas that are generally considered off-limits" in the medical and healthcare communities, including the bureaucratic tyranny of the FDA, fluoridation, GMOs and glyphosate, non-ionizing RF radiation, and dangers of some vaccines and additives. It was his writings on vaccines that seems to have brought a hundred ban-hammers down on him as one of the "dirty dozen" sites publishing things the Biden administration and Dr. Fauci don't approve of.

Both all of today's world, and Internet especially needs to protect viewpoints. Dr. Mercola's viewpoints will be missed, and his suppression is a huge blow to the normalization of viewpoint discrimination and the intolerance of free speech. (If only popular views are permitted, then there is no free speech — it is the unpopular views that require protection. As Voltaire famously put it: "I may not agree with anything you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." And yes, that includes things that are flat-out wrong, or even "dangerous"...)
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Once largest battery of the world catches fire (vic.gov.au)

Submitted by ffkom
ffkom writes: The Tesla battery in Moorabool, Australia, which has been the world's largest battery (in terms of capacity) up until recent years, has catched fire.
As David Jones points out in his eevblog video on the event, the blocks of that battery are located surprisingly near to each other, so the first burning block did incinerate at least one more, so far.

Submission + - Intel Is in Talks to Buy GlobalFoundries for About $30 Billion (wsj.com)

Submitted by labloke11
labloke11 writes: Intel Corp. is exploring a deal to buy GlobalFoundries Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that would turbocharge the semiconductor giant’s plans to make more chips for other tech companies and rate as its largest acquisition ever.

A deal could value GlobalFoundries at around $30 billion, the people said. It isn’t guaranteed one will come together, and GlobalFoundries could proceed with a planned initial public offering. GlobalFoundries is owned by Mubadala Investment Co., an investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government, but based in the U.S.

Any talks don’t appear to include GlobalFoundries itself as a spokeswoman for the company said it isn’t in discussions with Intel.

Intel’s new Chief Executive, Pat Gelsinger, in March said the company would launch a major push to become a chip manufacturer for others, a market dominated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Intel, with a market value of around $225 billion, this year pledged more than $20 billion in investments to expand chip-making facilities in the U.S. and Mr. Gelsinger has said more commitments domestically and abroad are in the works.

Submission + - FAA threatens shutdown of SpaceX's Starship program at Boca Chica (cnbc.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The Federal Aviation Administration warned Elon Musk’s SpaceX in a letter two months ago that the company’s work on a launch tower for future Starship rocket launches is yet unapproved, and will be included in the agency’s ongoing environmental review of the facility in Boca Chica, Texas. “The company is building the tower at its own risk,” an FAA spokesperson told CNBC on Wednesday, noting that the environmental review could recommend taking down the launch tower.

The FAA last year began an environmental review of SpaceX’s Starship development facility, as Musk’s company said it planned to apply for licenses to launch the next-generation rocket prototypes from Boca Chica. While the FAA completed an environmental assessment of the area in 2014, that review was specific to SpaceX’s much-smaller Falcon series of rockets.

Submission + - Fifteen Percent of US Air Force F-35s Don't Have Working Engines (thedrive.com)

Submitted by Areyoukiddingme
Areyoukiddingme writes:

At a hearing before the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services’ Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces yesterday, Air Force Lieutenant General Eric T. Fick, director of the F-35 Joint Program Office, confirmed that 41 U.S. Air Force F-35s, as well as one Joint Strike Fighter belonging to the U.S. Marine Corps, another from the U.S. Navy, and three that had been delivered to foreign air forces were grounded without engines. Those figures were as of July 8.

Submission + - New Law Helps Chinese Government Stockpile Zero-Days (securityweek.com) 6

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: Starting on September 1, 2021, the Chinese government will require that any Chinese citizen who finds a zero-day vulnerability to pass the details to the Chinese government and must not sell or give the knowledge to any third-party outside of China. Under the new rule, Chinese APTs are likely to acquire a greater stockpile of zero-days than they already have.

The most obvious assumption of the new law is that Chinese found zero-days will be funneled into the Chinese APT groups, and will not be made available for purchase by the NSA or Russian state actors.

Submission + - Microsoft and ISPs did door-to-door router replacements to stop Trickbot malware (theverge.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Microsoft says it helped internet service providers go door-to-door replacing routers compromised with the Trickbot malware in Brazil and Latin America, hoping to squash an international hacking group. Trickbot is known to hijack routers and internet of things devices that are often easy to infect without owners realizing it. Eradicating malware from routers can be particularly difficult for users, making in-person replacement a surprisingly effective tactic. A Microsoft spokesperson described the details to The Verge as follows:

"This kind of victim remediation involves incredible coordination with the local ISPs and hosting providers. Microsoft provides notifications about compromised devices and often works directly with the ISPs and hosting providers to share additional information and offer any necessary technical assistance. In Brazil, the ISP used this information to personally visit their customers to replace routers that were infected with Trickbot malware."

Submission + - Tesla's $16,000 Quote for a $700 Fix Is Why Right to Repair Matters (thedrive.com) 2

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: First-party repair shops often get a bad rap. OEM parts are expensive, especially for new cars, and the independent dealership model often revolves around slim profits on new vehicles with after-sales making up a good chunk of profits. As automakers with direct-to-consumer sales like Tesla expand service offerings to consumers, it's becoming abundantly clear that the high cost isn't going anywhere.

One Tesla Model 3 leasee discovered this first-hand after hitting road debris and damaging his battery pack. After taking his vehicle to a Tesla service center, he was handed an estimate for more than $16,000 to replace said pack. After seeking an alternative solution online, the owner reached out to Rich Benoit and the team at Electrified Garage who got him on the road again for just $700. To add insult to injury, the owner of the car mentions that Tesla was originally planning to keep the Model 3's damaged battery pack. That was until he referenced a consumer protection act provision put in place by New Jersey which prevents automotive service facilities from refusing to return a replacement part under most conditions when requested by a customer—most notably when the replacement part isn't sold as an exchange (with a core charge).

Normally, this is where we would ask Tesla about this, but since it dissolved its public relations department, there's nobody to officially comment.

Submission + - YouTube Censored Videos Uncovering China's Persecution Of Uighur Muslims (reuters.com)

Submitted by sinij
sinij writes: A human rights group that attracted millions of views on YouTube to testimonies from people who say their families have disappeared in China's Xinjiang region is moving its videos to little-known service Odysee after some were taken down by the Google-owned streaming giant, two sources told Reuters.

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