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Submission + - Maryland To Become First State To Tax Online Ads Sold By Facebook And Google. (npr.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: With a pair of votes, Maryland can now claim to be a pioneer: it's the first place in the country that will impose a tax on the sale of online ads.

The House of Delegates and Senate both voted this week to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of a bill passed last year to levy a tax on online ads. The tax will apply to the revenue companies like Facebook and Google make from selling digital ads, and will range from 2.5% to 10% per ad, depending on the value of the company selling the ad. (The tax would only apply to companies making more than $100 million a year.)

Proponents say the new tax is simply a reflection of where the economy has gone, and an attempt to have Maryland's tax code catch up to it. The tax is expected to draw in an estimated $250 million a year to help fund an ambitious decade-long overhaul of public education in the state that's expected to cost $4 billion a year in new spending by 2030. (Hogan also vetoed that bill, and the Democrat-led General Assembly also overrode him this week.)

Still, there remains the possibility of lawsuits to stop the tax from taking effect; Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh warned last year that "there is some risk" that a court could strike down some provisions of the bill over constitutional concerns.

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 + - 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 + - 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 + - Scientists Discover Coral Reef Taller Than the Empire State Building (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: An enormous coral reef has been found at the northern tip of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the first such discovery in 120 years, scientists say. At 500m (1,640ft) high, the reef is taller than New York's Empire State Building and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Scientists on a 12-month mission found the structure, detached from the Great Barrier Reef off Cape York, last week. They were conducting 3D mapping of the sea floor in the area. A team aboard a research vessel owned by the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI), a non-profit group based in California, used an underwater robot to explore the reef.

The reef is the first of its kind to be found in the region since the late 1800s, scientists said. There are known to be seven other tall reefs in the region, including the one at Raine Island — the world's most important green sea turtle nesting area. While the reef is bedded to the ocean floor off North Queensland, it is detached, meaning it is not part of the main body of the Great Barrier Reef. Described as "blade-like," the reef is 1.5km wide (one mile), then rises 500m to its shallowest depth of only 40m below the sea surface. Researchers are expected to continue surveying the northern Great Barrier Reef until 17 November.

Submission + - Amid the Pandemic's Urban Quiet, A Song that Makes Sense

Submitted by nightcats
nightcats writes: Every musician knows that when the performers can hear one another, the performance is always better than otherwise. This principle applies in nature as well, and has been anecdotally witnessed amid the quiet imposed by COVID-19 on cities around the world. In San Francisco, behavioral ecologist Liz Derryberry has been able to deliver a dramatic scientific demonstration of the changes to the songs of the white-crowned sparrow amid the quiet of 2020:

With most San Franciscans staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, she decided to seize an unprecedented opportunity to study how this small, scrappy songbird responded when human noises disappeared.

By recording the species’ calls among the abandoned streets of the Bay Area in the following months, Derryberry and colleagues have revealed that the shutdown dramatically improved the birds’ calls, both in quality and efficiency.

The research, published today in Science, is among the first to scientifically evaluate the effects of the pandemic on urban wildlife. It also adds to a burgeoning field of research into how the barrage of human-made noise has disrupted nature, from ships drowning out whale songs to automobile traffic jamming bat sonar.

Submission + - SPAM: A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19, and an Interesting New Hypothesis Has Emerged

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: Earlier this summer, the Summit supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee set about crunching data on more than 40,000 genes from 17,000 genetic samples in an effort to better understand Covid-19. Summit is the second-fastest computer in the world, but the process — which involved analyzing 2.5 billion genetic combinations — still took more than a week.

When Summit was done, researchers analyzed the results. It was, in the words of Dr. Daniel Jacobson, lead researcher and chief scientist for computational systems biology at Oak Ridge, a “eureka moment.” The computer had revealed a new theory about how Covid-19 impacts the body: the bradykinin hypothesis. The hypothesis provides a model that explains many aspects of Covid-19, including some of its most bizarre symptoms. It also suggests 10-plus potential treatments, many of which are already FDA approved. Jacobson’s group published their results in a paper in the journal eLife in early July.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Google Performs First Quantum Simulation of a Chemical Reaction (newscientist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Google researchers have used a quantum computer to simulate a chemical reaction for the first time. The reaction is a simple one, but this marks a step towards finding a practical use for quantum computers. A team at Google has used the company’s Sycamore device to perform the first accurate quantum simulation of a chemical reaction. Sycamore achieved quantum supremacy in 2019 when it carried out a calculation that would be impossible for a classical computer to perform in a practical amount of time. For the computer’s latest feat, the researchers simulated a diazene molecule, which consists of two nitrogen atoms and two hydrogen atoms, undergoing a reaction in which the hydrogen atoms move into different configurations around the nitrogens. The quantum simulation agreed with simulations the researchers performed on classical computers to check their work.

Submission + - UK Will Take a Crack At Regulating Future Self-Driving Car Systems (cnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The UK's Department for Transportation said Tuesday it plans new regulations in preparation for "automated lane-keeping-assist systems." These kinds of systems could potentially let a car control all necessary functions at lower speeds, even in the city. It's probably a matter of when this kind of technology is available, and when it does hit the road, the UK hopes to have comprehensive regulations in place and seeks input from relevant industries. The current proposal would allow this kind of automated system to operate at speeds up to 70 mph on roads in the country. This follows regulations passed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe this past June, which allows this kind of technology to operate at speeds up to 37 mph.

Perhaps more crucially, the future legislation in the UK will look to either define cars featuring automated lane-keeping assist as autonomous or not. If the country does, automakers and technology companies would be legally responsible for the car's safety since under an "autonomous" definition, driver's wouldn't be the ones operating the vehicle when the system is engaged. This legal dance has led numerous automakers to skip Level 3 automated systems and focus on Level 4 and 5, which would give a car total autonomy and not require the vehicle to hand back controls to the driver in the event of an error. Essentially, UK drivers would be legally permitted to rely on future automated systems with no penalties, unlike today.

Submission + - A car-sized asteroid made the closest Earth flyby a space rock has ever survived (space.com)

Submitted by louisfreeman
louisfreeman writes: A newly discovered car-sized asteroid just made the closest-known flyby to Earth without hitting our planet.

On Sunday (Aug. 16), the asteroid, initially labeled ZTF0DxQ and now formally known to astronomers as 2020 QG, swooped by Earth at a mere 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) away. That gives 2020 QG the title of closest asteroid flyby ever recorded that didn't end with the space rock's demise.

Submission + - Transparent solar panels for windows hit record 8% efficiency (umich.edu)

Submitted by Bodhammer
Bodhammer writes: "In a step closer to skyscrapers that serve as power sources, a team led by University of Michigan researchers has set a new efficiency record for color-neutral, transparent solar cells.

The team achieved 8.1% efficiency and 43.3% transparency with an organic, or carbon-based, design rather than conventional silicon. While the cells have a slight green tint, they are much more like the gray of sunglasses and automobile windows."

Hopefully this will not take 5-10 years to commercialize.

Submission + - Should Perl 7 Be Backwards Compatible? (lwn.net) 2

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: What's up with Perl 7? Perl Foundation board member Ricardo Signes tried to sum up the state of the community in a detailed post to the "Perl 5 porters" mailing list. And in a section titled "To Break or Not To Break," he writes that "The central Perl 7 question is not about version numbering, but rather about backward compatibility guarantees..." And more specifically, it's how to respond to the question of whether Perl 5 "is too constrained by backward compatibility to grow significantly in utility or rate of use." He presents three possible responses:

— Reject the premise. "There is a lot of room for forward motion without breaking changes, if we would just stop trying to change the rules and move forward."

— Accept the premise, but then "let Perl continue along its current course, becoming ever more stable as it is used by an ever-diminishing audience until it is given its rightful place in the Hall of the Honored Dead."

— Or, "figure out which constraints can, like chains, be shrugged off so we can move ahead..."

While he sees merit in all three positions, the core hope of the Perl 7 plan is choice #3. "Maybe there are kinds of backward compatibility that can be shrugged off without disrupting the vast majority of Perl users, while making the language easier to use and (very importantly) easy to *continue* to improve." And more to the point, "We aren't picking up new core developers for a bunch of reasons, but one is 'it's just too much of a slog to -do- anything.' So I am in favor of making selective breakages in order to make the language better and the implementation more workable. I think this is the core of the Perl 7 plan, and the big question is 'what are those selective breakages.'"

That section is followed by another one titled "How Shall I Break Thee?" ("The impact on existing code is a big question to be answered. Nobody is arguing that we'll attract a new set of users and developers by first alienating all the existing ones.") While there's good suggestions, right now "The plan is to come up with a plan." And this starts with creating a document to formalize the governance model of the Perl Steering Committee as their way of pre-forming some early consensus and refining ideas before they're then put up for general discussion on the mailing list, with a project manager giving final approval to the larger community's decisions. This will then be followed by "producing a clear set of intended changes..."

"Until that happens, I just hope for a little period of calm and good faith."

Submission + - Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide Into Ethanol (cleantechnica.com)

Submitted by Third Position
Third Position writes: According to a press release from ANL, researchers at the lab, working with partners at Northern Illinois University, have discovered a new electrocatalyst that converts carbon dioxide and water into ethanol with very high energy efficiency, high selectivity for the desired final product, and low cost. Ethanol is a particularly desirable commodity because it is an ingredient in nearly all US gasoline and is widely used as an intermediate product in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries.

“The process resulting from our catalyst would contribute to the circular carbon economy, which entails the reuse of carbon dioxide,” says Di-Jia Liu, senior chemist in Argonne’s chemical sciences and engineering division and also a scientist at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. “The process resulting from our catalyst would contribute to the circular carbon economy, which entails the reuse of carbon dioxide,” he says. The new electrochemical process converts carbon dioxide emitted from industrial processes, such as fossil fuel power plants or alcohol fermentation plants, into valuable commodities at reasonable cost.

Submission + - Amazon's Engineers Are Building Robots In Their Garages (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The next generation of Amazon's Scout bots – the fully-electric autonomous delivery devices the company is hoping to deploy soon – is currently being designed and built by a team of mechanical engineers in Seattle, and not in the most orthodox of settings. Instead of working in sleek labs, Amazon's engineers have effectively resorted to re-arranging their homes and garages to accommodate the development of the sophisticated piece of technology the Scout bot is promising to be.

The cooler-sized bot is already deployed in a handful of US cities where it is being tested, albeit always accompanied by a human. And to make sure that Scout bots ever reach the next stage of development, Amazon's team had to work their way around the new restrictions suddenly imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, engineers need a lot more than a decent internet connection to be able to work remotely. In early March, therefore, Seattle-based Amazon mechanical engineer Jeff Gorges transformed his garage into an R&D lab of motors and wheels in anticipation of office closures. Since then, Gorges has been iterating the bot from his garage workbench, testing various new features by driving the device around his patio. The new Scout bot has now been assembled and debugged by Gorges, all from the comfort from his own home.

Submission + - Firefox 79 Clears Redirect Tracking Cookies Every 24 Hours

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today started rolling out Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) 2.0 in Firefox. While the company technically launched Firefox 79 for Windows, Mac, and Linux last week, it only unveiled its marquee feature today. Firefox 79 by default blocks redirect tracking, also known as bounce tracking, and adds a handful of new developer features. You can download Firefox 79 for desktop now from Firefox.com, and all existing users should be able to upgrade to it automatically. According to Mozilla, Firefox has about 250 million active users, making it a major platform for web developers to consider.

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