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Comment Re:Actually *this* is Hasselblad (Score 1) 56

Ok, fine, I can accept that, but my question is still more or less "who needs this, and why would someone be willing to pay a few hundred dollars more for a camera with it"?

I get that there may be a niche that this fits, but I cannot imagine that there are that many people out there that will really benefit from it..

Then again, we're all constantly bombarded with ads and enticements to purchase stuff with capabilities we'll never use, so I guess I'm just being crabby.

Comment Re:Actually *this* is Hasselblad (Score 1) 56

Unless you're a professional photographer that uses your phone for your work, why is that at all relevant?

I mean, it's neat and all, but how is that really worth whatever price premium is being placed on the phone as a result of the super spiffy camera?

Hasselblad is a well-known and respected brand, but to me the utility of putting a Leica or Hasselblad lens on what is essentially a point-and-shoot camera is akin to using a solid gold RCA cable to connect two bits of stereo equipment.

Submission + - Free software advocates seek removal of Richard Stallman and entire FSF board (arstechnica.com) 5

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Richard Stallman's return to the Free Software Foundation's board of directors has drawn condemnation from many people in the free software community. An open letter signed by hundreds of people today called for Stallman to be removed again and for the FSF's entire board to resign. Letter signers include Neil McGovern, GNOME Foundation executive director and former Debian Project Leader; Deb Nicholson, general manager of the Open Source Initiative; Matthew Garrett, a former member of the FSF board of directors; seven of the eight members of the X.org Foundation board of directors; Elana Hashman of the Debian Technical Committee, Open Source Initiative, and Kubernetes project; Molly de Blanc of the Debian Project and GNOME Foundation; and more than 300 others. That number has been rising quickly today: the open letter contains instructions for signing it.

The letter said all members of the FSF board should be removed because they "have enabled and empowered RMS for years. They demonstrate this again by permitting him to rejoin the FSF Board. It is time for RMS to step back from the free software, tech ethics, digital rights, and tech communities, for he cannot provide the leadership we need." The letter also called for Stallman to be removed from his position leading the GNU Project.

Submission + - Oh Ship: Suez Canal blocked after 400-m long vessel turned sideways, ran aground (theguardian.com) 1

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: A giant container ship has run aground in the Suez canal, causing a traffic jam of vessels at either end of the vital international trade artery.

The 220,000-tonne, 400m-long Ever Given became stuck in the canal on Tuesday and several attempts to refloat it failed.

The Ever Given, which is carrying hundreds of containers bound for Rotterdam from China, is owned by the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen and registered in Panama.

The shipping monitoring site Vesselfinder (https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9811000) shows the stricken ship and the traffic jam of other vessels at either end of the canal. The trade site Tanker Trackers reported that there were “a lot of fully-laden” tankers stuck at either end of the canal carrying Saudi, Russian, Omani and US oil.

Submission + - Consumer Reports: Tesla's In-Car Cameras Raise Privacy Concerns (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla’s use of in-car cameras to record and transmit video footage of passengers to develop self-driving technology raises privacy concerns, influential U.S. magazine Consumer Reports said on Tuesday. Consumer Reports said the usage potentially undermines the safety benefits of driver monitoring, which is to alert drivers when they are not paying attention to the road.

“If Tesla has the ability to determine if the driver isn’t paying attention, it needs to warn the driver in the moment, like other automakers already do,” said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports’ auto test center. Automakers such as Ford Motor and General Motors, whose monitoring systems do not record or transmit data or video, use infrared technology to identify drivers’ eye movements or head position to warn them if they are exhibiting signs of impairment or distraction, the magazine said.

Comment Re:They're going to be broken up anyway (Score 1) 23

by Binkleyz (#61189384) Attached to: US Supreme Court Rebuffs Facebook Appeal In User Tracking Lawsuit
So, in essence, there is no visible evidence because the media won't allow anyone to see the evidence?

How is that distinguishable from the "Kraken" lawsuits? In the end, their argument boiled down to the idea that the lack of evidence was itself evidence of suppression of evidence. Little wonder that when pressed and facing real-world consequences, they've admitted that they made it all up.

I've watched Biden speak in person and on TV, and while he's not, as a septugenarian, as quick witted or glib as a 30 y/o car salesman, I have zero concerns about his ability to form a sentence nor use reason and logic to reach a conclusion, nor his ability to farm out issues to competent members of his administration. As far as the options, sadly, Joe Biden was the only D moderate and mellow enough to take on Trump. Bernie or Warren would have scared off the middle-road folks.

Comment Re:They're going to be broken up anyway (Score 1) 23

by Binkleyz (#61189034) Attached to: US Supreme Court Rebuffs Facebook Appeal In User Tracking Lawsuit

I'm sorry, but did YOU choose a man suffering from dementia and elder abuse to lead an entire country?

What evidence is there to support that assertion, other than Fox "news" talking points?

Also, considering the alternative and his history of g r i f t and self-dealing, along with an almost pathological aversion to the truth, what option did we really have?

Submission + - Microsoft Looking To Buy Discord For More Than $10 Billion (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by phalse phace
phalse phace writes: Microsoft Corp. is in talks to acquire Discord Inc., a video-game chat community, for more than $10 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Discord has been talking to potential buyers and software giant Microsoft is in the running, but no deal is imminent, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private.

San Francisco-based Discord is best known for its free service that lets gamers communicate by video, voice and text, and people stuck at home during the pandemic have increasingly used its technology for study groups, dance classes, book clubs and other virtual gatherings. It has more than 100 million monthly active users and has been elaborating its communication tools to turn it into a “place to talk” rather than merely a gamer-centric chat platform.

Microsoft, which last year sought to buy social-media app TikTok and held talks to acquire Pinterest Inc., has been shopping for assets that would provide access to thriving communities of users, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.

Submission + - U.S. Health Officials Question AstraZeneca Vaccine Data And Efficacy (thehill.com)

Submitted by phalse phace
phalse phace writes: U.S. health officials from the Data and Safety Monitoring Board issued an unusual statement that it was "concerned by information released by AstraZeneca on initial data from its COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial." This comes less than 24 hours after AstraZeneca said its vaccine had an "efficacy of 79% at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 and 100% efficacy at preventing severe disease and hospitalisation" and a week after several countries suspended dosing of the vaccine due to concerns of dangerous blood clots.

The Data and Safety Monitoring Board "expressed concern that AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from that trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data."

As an oversight committee, the Data and Safety Monitoring Board helps regulate and evaluate clinical trials of new medicines to ensure accuracy and adherence to protocols.

In a statement released early Tuesday morning, AstraZeneca said the interim results it announced on Monday were current as of Feb. 17.

The latest development could throw a wrench in AstraZeneca's plan to seek the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization for its vaccine.

Submission + - LA Times Investigates Sneaker Resale Industry As Amazon Promotes it to Kids

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Sneakerheads like to complain about the one that got away," writes the L.A. Times' Ronald D. White. "About haunting sneaker apps and websites yet failing to win shoe-drop raffles or find what they want at semiaffordable prices. About how the system must be rigged by resellers using bots and inside connections. Now, a scandal involving a Nike executive and her reseller son is roiling the sneaker world, highlighting worst suspicions about a booming market in which shoes can be traded like stocks. For serious sneaker collectors, this is more than a tempest in a shoebox."

In a case of remarkably bad timing, just as the ethics of the lucrative sneaker resale industry came under scrutiny in the wake of the Nike scandal and questions were raised about exorbitant pandemic-fueled profits, Amazon launched a program for K-12 students that highlights how CS makes the sneaker resale marketplace goldrush possible. "Amazon and the AWS Services are really the backbone and foundation of how we do all of our work in Data Science," explains a GOAT Data Platform Engineer in an Amazon Future Engineer lesson that teaches kids how AI and data can be used to help flip sneakers by classifying GOAT website visitors as "Hype" ['willing to splurge'], "Core", or "Under Retail" user types.
ISS

Microbes Unknown To Science Discovered On the International Space Station (sciencealert.com) 48

Posted by BeauHD from the lost-and-found dept.
AmiMoJo shares a report from ScienceAlert: The menagerie of bacterial and fungal species living among us is ever growing -- and this is no exception in low-gravity environments, such as the International Space Station (ISS). Researchers from the United States and India working with NASA have now discovered four strains of bacteria living in different places in the ISS -- three of which were, until now, completely unknown to science.

Three of the four strains were isolated back in 2015 and 2016 -- one was found on an overhead panel of the ISS research stations, the second was found in the Cupola, the third was found on the surface of the dining table; the fourth was found in an old HEPA filter returned to Earth in 2011. All four of the strains belong to a family of bacteria found in soil and freshwater; they are involved in nitrogen fixation, plant growth, and can help stop plant pathogens. Basically, good bacteria to have around if you're growing things. The research has been published in Frontiers in Microbiology.
Space

Scientists Believe 'Oumuamua Was Chunk of Extrasolar Pluto-Like Planet (phys.org) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the no-longer-considered-a-piece-of-alien-technology dept.
lazarus shares a report from Phys.org: Two Arizona State University astrophysicists, Steven Desch and Alan Jackson of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, set out to explain the odd features of 'Oumuamua and have determined that it is likely a piece of a Pluto-like planet from another solar system. Desch and Jackson hypothesized that the object was made of different ices and calculated how quickly these ices would sublimate (passing from a solid to a gas) as 'Oumuamua passed by the sun. From there, they calculated the rocket effect, the object's mass and shape, and the reflectivity of the ices.

The scientists found one ice in particular -- solid nitrogen -- that provided an exact match to all the object's features simultaneously. And since solid nitrogen ice can be seen on the surface of Pluto, it is possible that a comet-like object could be made of the same material. "We knew we had hit on the right idea when we completed the calculation for what albedo (how reflective the body is) would make the motion of 'Oumuamua match the observations," said Jackson, who is a research scientist and an Exploration Fellow at ASU. "That value came out as being the same as we observe on the surface of Pluto or Triton, bodies covered in nitrogen ice."

They then calculated the rate at which chunks of solid nitrogen ice would have been knocked off the surfaces of Pluto and similar bodies early in our solar system's history. And they calculated the probability that chunks of solid nitrogen ice from other solar systems would reach ours. "It was likely knocked off the surface by an impact about half a billion years ago and thrown out of its parent system," Jackson said. "Being made of frozen nitrogen also explains the unusual shape of 'Oumuamua. As the outer layers of nitrogen ice evaporated, the shape of the body would have become progressively more flattened, just like a bar of soap does as the outer layers get rubbed off through use."

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