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Submission + - SPAM: Virtual Kidnapping

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: 'We have your daughter': The terrified father paid the ransom. Then he found his kid where he least expected her.

Criminals are staging a devious new kind of kidnapping — and the FBI is stumped.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Amazon Killed the Name Alexa

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Alexa used to be a name primarily given to human babies. Now it’s mainly for robots. Seven years ago, Amazon released Alexa, its voice assistant, and as the number of devices answering to that name has skyrocketed, its popularity with American parents has plummeted. In fact, it has suffered one of the sharpest declines of any popular name in recent years. “Alexa stands alone as a name that was steadily popular—not a one-year celebrity wonder, not a fading past favorite—that was pushed off the popularity cliff,” Laura Wattenberg, the founder of the naming-trends website Namerology, told me.

At first, the number of baby Alexas spiked following the voice assistant’s rollout in late 2014—perhaps parents heard the name in the news and liked it—but it has since crashed. Likely, parents began to realize that having the name could be a nuisance, or worse, could become associated with subservience, because people are always giving orders to their virtual Alexas. This up-and-down pattern reminded Wattenberg of what happens with babies named after hurricanes, when “the news coverage and attention causes the name to briefly shoot up, and then the aftermath, when the name is constantly referred to as a disaster, kind of kills it off.” Basically, Amazon’s impact on the name Alexa resembles that of a natural disaster.

The data on baby names released by the Social Security Administration don’t indicate why parents pick or avoid particular names, but Alexa’s trajectory mirrors the adoption of smart speakers in the U.S. Bret Kinsella, the founder of Voicebot.ai, a site that covers and analyzes data on the voice-assistant industry, told me that consumer uptake surged three years after Alexa’s release, in 2017. And the number of baby Alexas plunged below its pre-Amazon baseline in 2018—that may be when many parents started to understand the ubiquity of the name. (Now more than 90 million American adults are estimated to have a smart speaker in their household.)
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Human metabolism peaks at age 1, tanks from age 60 (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Hope Thelps
Hope Thelps writes: The BBC reports on the results of a study of the metabolism of 6,400 people from eight days old up to age 95 across 29 countries.

The study, published in the journal Science, found four phases of metabolic life:

  • birth to age one, when the metabolism shifts from being the same as the mother's to a lifetime high 50% above that of adults
  • a gentle slowdown until the age of 20, with no spike during all the changes of puberty
  • no change at all between the ages of 20 and 60
  • a permanent decline, with yearly falls that, by 90, leave metabolism 26% lower than in mid-life

"It is a picture we've never really seen before and there is a lot of surprises in it," one of the researchers, Prof John Speakman, from the University of Aberdeen, said.

"The most surprising thing for me is there is no change throughout adulthood — if you are experiencing mid-life spread you can no longer blame it on a declining metabolic rate."

Submission + - A Long-Lost Legendary Roman Fruit Tree Has Been Grown From 2,000-Year-Old Seeds (sciencealert.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Scientists have cultivated plants from date palm seeds that languished in ancient ruins and caves for 2,000 years.

This remarkable feat confirms the long-term viability of the kernels once ensconced in succulent Judean dates, a fruit cultivar lost for centuries. The results make it an excellent candidate for studying the longevity of plant seeds. ;

From those date palm saplings, the researchers have begun to unlock the secrets of the highly sophisticated cultivation practices that produced the dates praised by Herodotus, Galen, and Pliny the Elder.

"The current study sheds light on the origins of the Judean date palm, suggesting that its cultivation, benefiting from genetically distinct eastern and western populations, arose from local or introduced eastern varieties, which only later were crossed with western varieties," the researchers wrote in their paper.

Submission + - Russian inspection satellite, Cosmos2542 synchronizes orbit with KH11 USA245 (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A Russian satellite has been shifting its position in orbit to bring it closer to a US spy satellite, according to publicly available data.

The Russian satellite, called Cosmos 2542, synchronised its orbit with USA 245, a US reconnaissance satellite deployed for military and intelligence applications.

The movement of the Russian satellite was tracked on Thursday by Michael Thompson, a graduate student and independent satellite tracker, and detailed on Twitter.

Cosmos 2542 has had the capability to observe USA 245 consistently for the past week and is ‘loitering’ around US 245 in consistent view, he said.

Submission + - Tesla tops Wall Street estimates with 112,000 vehicle deliveries in 4Q 2019 (cnbc.com)

Submitted by SpankiMonki
SpankiMonki writes:

Tesla said it delivered 92,550 Model 3 cars and 19,450 Model S and X vehicles during the fourth quarter. The company was expected to deliver 87,900 Model 3, 9,800 Model S and 9,300 Model X vehicles, according to an average of analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Investors were also watching production numbers. In the second and third quarters of 2019, Tesla delivered more cars than it produced. The production versus deliveries gap widened in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter, Tesla manufactured 96,155 vehicles and delivered 97,000 vehicles. In the fourth quarter, it manufactured 104,891 vehicles and delivered 112,000.

The electric-car maker said it has produced just under 1,000 cars that are ready for sale at its new factory in Shanghai. Tesla started delivering vehicles to Chinese customers late last month.

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