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Submission + - SPAM: Nobel Prize-winning scientist Frances Arnold retracts paper

Submitted by omfglearntoplay
omfglearntoplay writes: American scientist Frances Arnold, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry, has retracted her latest paper.

Prof Arnold shared the award with George P Smith and Gregory Winter for their research on enzymes in 2018.

A subsequent paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams was published in the journal Science in May 2019.

It has been retracted because the results were not reproducible, and the authors found data missing from a lab notebook.

Reproduction is an essential part of validating scientific experiments. If an experiment is a success, one would expect to get the same results every time it was conducted.

Prof Arnold came forward with the news herself on Twitter on 2 January.

"For my first work-related tweet of 2020, I am totally bummed to announce that we have retracted last year's paper on enzymatic synthesis of beta-lactams. The work has not been reproducible," she tweeted.

"It is painful to admit, but important to do so. I apologize to all. I was a bit busy when this was submitted, and did not do my job well." ...
Prof Arnold is a widely respected chemical engineer, whose work pioneering "directed evolution" won her the â1m (£0.8m) Millennium Technology Prize in 2016.

She is also on the board of directors for Google's parent company Alphabet.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - NextMind Is Building A Real-Time Brain Computer Interface, Unveils $399 Dev Kit

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: NextMind is developing a brain-computer interface that translates signals from the visual cortex into digital commands. We tried NextMind’s device, which lets you input commands into computers and AR/VR headsets with your visual attention. Eventually, the Paris-based startup wants to let you do the same with your visual imagination. We spoke with NextMind CEO Sid Kouider ahead of CES 2020, where his company is unveiling a dev kit shipping to select developers and partners this month for $399. After the early access period, a second limited run (waitlist) of dev kits will begin shipping in Q2 2020.
Software

How To Take a Big Vendor To Small Claims and Win 171

Posted by kdawson from the microsoft-tax-refund dept.
snydeq writes "Gripe Line's Christina Tynan-Wood offers good news for those harboring grievances about faulty software or unfair licensing practices: it is in fact possible to take a big vendor to small claims court and win. But, as one woman's fight against Adobe demonstrates, detailed evidence and a deep understanding of the laws in question are essential to obtaining justice against big vendor lawyers. 'Evidence is the key factor,' explains one legal expert. 'Often the evidence people present does not show what they think it does. And they fail to make themselves aware of the rules of evidence so they can introduce any evidence they do have in court. These companies will have attorneys and those attorneys will use the rules of civil procedure to take advantage of your lack of knowledge.' Moreover, they will spare little expense no matter the magnitude of claims brought against them. 'The lawyer for Adobe tried an "end-user is stupid" argument,' explains the woman who took on Adobe over a software license she never had the privilege of agreeing to. 'But he gave that up when he learned I wasn't a lame-brain home computer user. I have a software engineering background and worked for Sun Microsystems and Fidelity Investments tech group.'"
NASA

Submission + - Senators Question Removal of NASA Program Manager 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The NY Times reports that one day after the removal of NASA's head of the Constellation Program, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, chairman of the Committee that oversees NASA, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the committee’s ranking Republican have asked NASA's inspector general to look into whether the NASA leadership is undermining the agency’s moon program and to “examine whether this or other recent actions by NASA were intended or could reasonably have been expected to foreclose the ability of Congress to consider meaningful alternatives” to President Obama’s proposed policy, which invests heavily in new space technologies and turns the launching of astronauts over to private companies. Congress has not yet agreed to the president’s proposed policy, which invests heavily in new space technologies and turns the launching of astronauts over to private companies, and inserted into this year’s budget legislation a clause that prohibits NASA from canceling the Constellation program or starting alternatives without Congressional approval. The manager, Jeffrey M. Hanley, whose reassignment is being called a promotion, had been publicly supported by Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, and other NASA officials, but he may have incurred displeasure by publicly talking about how Constellation could be made to fit into the slimmed-down budgets that President Obama has proposed for NASA’s human spaceflight endeavors. “It’s enough for us to be extraordinarily concerned,” said a Congressional staff member, who was authorized to speak only anonymously. “We just want the inspector general to follow the path and report back to us what he’s finding.”"

Submission + - Intelligence Density and the Creative Class (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by Doofus
Doofus writes: The Atlantic has an interesting review of some open-sourced work by Rob Pitingolo about the comparative educational attainment levels of various metropolitan areas.
While people are now capable of being far more mobile than in generations past, many people remain within 100 miles or so of where they were born. For the technology-partition of the creative class, this is less likely to be the case, in my personal experience. Do we technical people put interesting work and the concentration of human educational capital ahead of other considerations when deciding on a move? Or is it more complicated?
Is it more about the fact that the creative jobs are where the creative people are?

Submission + - Japan Plans Moon Base built by Robots for Robots (popsci.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: These ARE the droids we've been looking for. The Japanese space agency, JAXA, has plans to build a base on the Moon by 2020. Not for humans, but for robots, and built by robots, too. A panel authorized by Japan's prime minister has drawn up preliminary plans of how humanoid and rover robots will begin surveying the moon by 2015, and then begin construction of a base near the south pole of the moon. The robots and the base will run on solar power, with total costs about $2.2 billion USD, according to the panel chaired by Waseda University President Katsuhiko Shirai.
Google

Submission + - Google Describes Wi-Fi Sniffing in Pending Patent

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: After mistakenly saying that it did not collect Wi-Fi payload data, Google had to reverse itself, saying 'it's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks.' OK, mistakes happen. But, as Seinfeld might ask, then what's the deal with the pending Google patent that describes capturing wireless data packets by operating a device — which 'may be placed in a vehicle' — in a 'sniffer' or 'monitor' mode and analyzing them on a server? Guess belated kudos are owed to the savvy Slashdot commenter who speculated back in January that the patent-pending technology might be useful inside a Google Street View vehicle. Google faces inquiries into its Wi-Fi packet sniffing practices by German and U.S. authorities.
Science

Submission + - What Scientists Really Think About Religion 4

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post has a book review of "Science and Religion: What Scientists Really Think" by Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund who did a detailed survey of 1,646 scientists at elite American research universities that reveals that scientists often practice a closeted faith worrying about how their peers would react to learning about their religious views. "After four years of research, at least one thing became clear: Much of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. The 'insurmountable hostility' between science and religion is a caricature, a thought-cliche, perhaps useful as a satire on groupthink, but hardly representative of reality," writes Ecklund. Unsurprisingly, Ecklund found that 64 percent of scientists are either atheists (34%) or agnostic (30%) but only five of the 275 in-depth interviewees actively oppose religion and even among the third who are atheists, many consider themselves "spiritual" with one describing his spiritual atheism as being rooted in "wonder about the complexity and the majesty of existence," a sentiment many nonscientists — religious or not — would recognize. "According to the scientists I interviewed, the academy seems to have a “strong culture” that suppresses discussion about religion in many areas," says Ecklund. "Yet so few scientists talk openly about issues related to religion that we do not know the true consequences of having such discussions. To remove the perceived stigma, we would need to have more scientists talking openly about issues of religion, where such issues are particularly relevant to their discipline.""
Networking

Chinese Networking Vendor Huawei's Murky Ownership 170

Posted by kdawson from the worthy-of-neal-stephenson dept.
A month ago we mentioned India's suspicions that telecomm equipment from China might contain backdoors. There hasn't been any smoking gun on such speculation. Now reader littlekorea sends in some background on the ties one important Chinese telecomm vender might or might not have to the government there. "Conspiracy theories abound as to whether networking kit vendor Huawei is owned or controlled by the Chinese government and/or the military-industrial complex. But who really owns Huawei? Kiwi journalist Juha Saarinen headed to Shanghai to find out."
Intel

Intel Targets AMD With Affordable Unlocked CPUs 207

Posted by kdawson from the overclock-at-will dept.
EconolineCrush writes "For years, AMD has catered to gamers and enthusiasts with mid-range Black Edition processors whose unlocked multipliers make overclocking easy. Intel has traditionally reserved unlocked multipliers for its ultra-expensive Extreme CPUs, but it has now brought the feature to affordable models that compete directly with AMD's most popular processors. The Core i5-655K and Core i7-875K have two and four cores, respectively, and they're priced at just $216 and $342. It appears that both will easily hit speeds in excess of 4GHz with air cooling. Surprisingly, even at stock speeds, the i7-875K offers better performance and power efficiency per dollar than just about any other desktop CPU out there."
Botnet

Symantec Finds Server Containing 44 Million Stolen Gaming Credentials 146

Posted by Soulskill from the who-wants-to-buy-a-level-80-paladin dept.
A Symantec blog post reports that the company recently stumbled upon a server hosting the stolen credentials for 44 million game accounts. It goes on to explain how the owners of the server made use of a botnet to process that mountain of data: "Now it's time to turn those gaming credentials into hard cash. But how do you find out which credentials are valid and thus worth some money? Three options come to mind: 1) Log on to gaming websites 44 million times! 2) Write a program to log in to the websites and check for you (this would take months). 3) Write a program that checks the login details and then distribute the program to multiple computers. Option one naturally seems next to impossible. Option two is also not very feasible, since websites typically block IP addresses after multiple failed login attempts. By taking advantage of the distributed processing that the third option offers, you can complete the task more quickly and help mitigate the multiple-login failure problems by spreading the task over more IP addresses. This is what Trojan.Loginck's creators have done."
Security

Submission + - Adobe May Change to Monthly Patch Cycle (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Adobe, which has been under fire for the security of its flagship products, Flash and Reader, for some time now, may be on the verge of changing its patching process to push fixes out on a monthly schedule, which would coincide with Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday releases. The change would be the second major adjustment to Adobe's patching process in the last year or so. In 2009 the company moved to a scheduled quarterly patch release process in an effort to give its customers a better chance to plan for testing and deployment. That change was generally well-received and Adobe has been releasing its patches on the same day as Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. Now Adobe may change the schedule again in order to get patches out more quickly. The company is considering releasing its security fixes for Reader on a monthly schedule, the same day as Microsoft releases its patches

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