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Submission + - Facebook is wrongly blocking news articles about the coronavirus pandemic (businessinsider.com)

McGruber writes: Facebook is blocking users from posting some legitimate news articles about the coronavirus in what appears to be a bug in its spam filters.

On Tuesday, multiple Facebook users reported on Twitter that they found themselves unable to post articles from certain news outlets including Business Insider, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, and the Times of Israel. It's not clear exactly what has gone wrong, and Facebook did not respond to a request for comment.

Alex Stamos, an outspoken former Facebook security exec, speculated that it might be caused by Facebook's shit to automated software after it sent its human content moderators home. "It looks like an anti-spam rule at FB is going haywire," he wrote on Twitter. "Facebook sent home content moderators yesterday, who generally can't [work from home] due to privacy commitments the company has made. We might be seeing the start of the [machine learning going nuts with less human oversight.

Submission + - The World's Fastest Supercomputers Hit Higher Speeds Than Ever With Linux (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In the latest Top 500 supercomputer ratings, the average speed of these Linux-powered racers is now an astonishing 1.14 petaflops. The fastest of the fast machines haven't changed since the June 2019 Top 500 supercomputer list. Leading the way is Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Summit system, which holds top honors with an HPL result of 148.6 petaflops. This is an IBM-built supercomputer using Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA Tesla V100 GPUs. In a rather distant second place is another IBM machine: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Sierra system. It uses the same chips, but it "only" hit a speed of 94.6 petaflops.

Close behind at No. 3 is the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer, with an HPL mark of 93.0 petaflops. TaihuLight was developed by China's National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology (NRCPC) and is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. It is powered exclusively by Sunway's SW26010 processors. Sunway's followed by the Tianhe-2A (Milky Way-2A). This is a system developed by China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). It's deployed at the National Supercomputer Center in China. Powered by Intel Xeon CPUs and Matrix-2000 accelerators, it has a top speed of 61.4 petaflops. Coming at No. 5, the Dell-built, Frontera, a Dell C6420 system is powered by Intel Xeon Platinum processors. It speeds along at 23.5 petaflops. It lives at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas. The most powerful new supercomputer on the list is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center for Computational Innovations (CCI)'s AiMOS. It made the list in the 25th position with 8.0 petaflops. The IBM-built system, like Summit and Sierra, is powered by Power9 CPUs and NVIDIA V100 GPUs.

Submission + - Researchers train rats to drive tiny cars (phys.org)

BytePusher writes:



Lambert said she had long been interested in neuroplasticityâ"how the brain changes in response to experience and challengesâ"and particularly wanted to explore how well rats that were housed in more natural settings ("enriched environments") performed against those kept in labs.

She and colleagues modified a robot car kit by adding a clear plastic food container to form a driver compartment with an aluminum plate placed on the bottom.

A copper wire was threaded horizontally across the cab to form three bars: left, center and right.

When a rat placed itself on the aluminum floor and touched the wire, the circuit was complete and the car moved in the direction selected. ...

As she had suspected, Lambert found that the animals kept in stimuli-rich environments performed far better than their lab rat counterparts, but "it was actually quite shocking to me that they were so much better," she said.

This makes me curious what the implications are for humans, their work environments, job performance and social mobility.

Submission + - "Hyperstealth" Invisibility Cloak Developed For Military Use (futurism.com)

Freshly Exhumed writes: Canada’s Hyperstealth Biotechnology already manufactures camouflage uniforms for militaries across the globe.
But now, the company has patented a new “Quantum Stealth” material that disguises a military’s soldiers — or even its tanks, aircraft, and ships — by making anything behind it seem invisible. Earlier in October, Hyperstealth filed a patent for the material, which doesn’t require a power source and is both paper-thin and inexpensive — all traits that could make it appealing for use on the battlefield. Alongside the news of the patent application, Hyperstealth released more than 100-minutes worth of footage describing and demonstrating the material, as summarized in this YouTube video.

Submission + - Firefox to Get Page Translation Feature, Like Chrome (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla developers are working on adding an automatic page translation feature to Firefox, similar to the one included in Google Chrome. However, Firefox's page translation feature will be different from the one supported in Google Chrome. Instead of relying on cloud-based text translation services (like Google Translate, Bing Translator, or Yandex.Translate), Firefox will use a client-side, machine learning-based translation library, currently being developed part of the Bergamot Project, which received €3 million ($3.35 million) in EU funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Submission + - U.S. Navy Scientist Files Room-Temperature Superconductor Patent Application (phys.org)

resistant writes: Potentially interesting news popped up this week on the room-temperature superconductor research front, courtesy of Phys.org :

A scientist working for the U.S. Navy has filed for a patent on a room-temperature superconductor, representing a potential paradigm shift in energy transmission and computer systems.

Salvatore Cezar Pais is listed as the inventor on the Navy's patent application made public by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday.

The application claims that a room-temperature superconductor can be built using a wire with an insulator core and an aluminum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) coating deposited by vacuum evaporation with a thickness of the London penetration depth and polarized after deposition.

An electromagnetic coil is circumferentially positioned around the coating such that when the coil is activated with a pulsed current, a non-linear vibration is induced, enabling room temperature superconductivity.

However, NextBigFuture says the same individual appears to have made other startling claims that arguably stretch the boundaries of belief, such as a "high-frequency gravitational wave generator" that could supposedly drive a spaceship without conventional propellants as well as an "inertial mass reduction device." Prudence would appear to dictate examining these and other claims by Mr. Salvatore Cezar Pais with great caution.

Submission + - Doctor Who won't return until 2020 (bbc.co.uk) 1

AmiMoJo writes: The next series of Doctor Who won't start until 2020, it's been confirmed. Series 11 ended on Sunday night, but after the festive special on New Year's Day, Jodie Whittaker won't be seen in the Tardis again next year.

Showrunner Chris Chibnall said work on the new series had already begun. The first episode of the series, the first to feature a female Doctor, drew a record audience. It saw the highest launch viewing figures for the sci-fi stalwart in a decade, with 10.9 million people tuning in. The series has been considered a ratings success, with viewing figures above those of the last two series when Peter Capaldi starred in the title role.

Submission + - After court order, 3D-printed gun pioneer starts selling CAD files (arstechnica.com) 1

CaptainDork writes: In a surprising announcement, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson announced Tuesday that while he would continue to comply with a federal court order forbidding him from internationally publishing CAD files of firearms, he would also begin selling copies of his 3D-printed gun files for a "suggested price" of $10 each.

The files, crucially, will be transmitted to customers "on a DD-branded flash drive" in the United States and won't be available as downloads.

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