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Submission + - "Real Genius" star Val Kilmer Dead at 65 (imdb.com)

Submitted by EmagGeek
EmagGeek writes: Val Kilmer, star of the iconic 90's science-comedy film "Real Genius," has died at the age of 65 from complications due to pneumonia. Many of us remember his breakout role in the cult classic, where he starred as brilliant yet unmotivated student Chris Wright, whose intellect overshadowed his professor and archenemy Prof. Jerry Hathaway, played by William Atherton, another notable film actor known for his roles in blockbuster films such as Ghostbusters and popular Christmas movie Die Hard. He had many other notable roles including his brilliant portrayal of Jim Morrison in "The Doors," and also many forgettable appearances in B-movies such as Top Gun and a movie in The Batman series.

He was a versatile actor who enjoyed the craft and refused to be typecast. We'll miss him.

Comment Signature requirement during voting (Score 1) 117

What's with the requirement of signatures and their verification during the voting process in United States? In other democracies, people are automatically registered to vote, and automatically included in voter rolls based on where they live. In paper-based voting, people sign in a separate book (a voter roll, if you will) only to inform the state, that they have voted.

Estonia, which has the world's most advanced voting system, has Internet-based voting with digital ID cards (in addition to paper), which enables people to vote from their home and worldwide, particularly when traveling, or living out of country. It's also handy during inclement weather, or when an otherwise sane and lucid person is unable to move around too much to reach the voting precinct. (of course, this may include a can of other worms.)

Submission + - Post Office senior executive suspended over allegations of destroying evidence (computerweekly.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Statement to public inquiry reveals that investigation is underway over allegations that a senior Post Office executive instructed staff to destroy evidence

The Post Office is investigating allegations that a senior executive instructed staff to destroy or conceal documents that could be of interest to the Post Office scandal public inquiry.

Submission + - Southwest Airlines Outdated Computers Keep Company Running (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Thelasko
Thelasko writes: Nearly every flight in the U.S. is grounded right now following a CrowdStrike system update error that’s affecting everything from travel to mobile ordering at Starbucks — but not Southwest Airlines flights. Southwest is still flying high, unaffected by the outage that’s plaguing the world today, and that’s apparently because it’s using Windows 3.1.

Comment Power adapters can fail, too (Score 1) 49

Check if the power adapter is at fault. Those do also fail after long-term usage.

I have a friend who continues to use a very old operator-provided Thomson (now Arris) TG-series Wi-Fi router -- there's a neat phone, Internet, and tv package.

According to the friend, it seemed, as if it was the router that was going to give up the ghost, because the connected landline wouldn't work.

Fortunately, he had exactly the same model router he got from another friend. The friend, who wouldn't bother too much, replaced only the router, and not the power adapter.

Turned out, that the newer same-model router wouldn't work.

The friend then switched off the newer router, and connected it using that router's power adapter, and turned it all on. The indicators lit up, the Internet worked. But it wasn't configured for the phone.

Then the friend came to the bright idea to test the old router with the newer, less-used power adapter, and lo and behold, the old router worked, bells and whistles and all.

I think this happened in early 2024. The friend reported, that the particular power adapter had been in nearly continual use since about December 2010, so, thirteen years and then some.

Submission + - A 19x Energy Jump in Capacitors May Be the Beginning of the End for Batteries (popularmechanics.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: It opens the door to a new era of electric efficiency.

Researchers believe they’ve discovered a new material structure that can improve the energy storage of capacitors.

The structure allows for storage while improving the efficiency of ultrafast charging and discharging.

The new find needs optimization but has the potential to help power electric vehicles.

A battery’s best friend is a capacitor. Powering everything from smartphones to electric vehicles, capacitors store energy from a battery in the form of an electrical charge and enable ultrafast charging and discharging. However, their Achilles’ heel has always been their limited energy storage efficiency.

Now, Washington University in St. Louis researchers have unveiled a groundbreaking capacitor design that looks like it could overcome those energy storage challenges.

In a study published in Science, lead author Sang-Hoon Bae, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, demonstrates a novel heterostructure that curbs energy loss, enabling capacitors to store more energy and charge rapidly without sacrificing durability.

While batteries excel in storage capacity, they fall short in speed, unable to charge or discharge rapidly. Capacitors fill this gap, delivering the quick energy bursts that power-intensive devices demand. Some smartphones, for example, contain up to 500 capacitors, and laptops around 800. Just don’t ask the capacitor to store its energy too long.

Within capacitors, ferroelectric materials offer high maximum polarization. That’s useful for ultra-fast charging and discharging, but it can limit the effectiveness of energy storage or the “relaxation time” of a conductor. “This precise control over relaxation time holds promise for a wide array of applications and has the potential to accelerate the development of highly efficient energy storage systems,” the study authors write.

Bae makes the change—one he unearthed while working on something completely different—by sandwiching 2D and 3D materials in atomically thin layers, using chemical and nonchemical bonds between each layer. He says a thin 3D core inserts between two outer 2D layers to produce a stack that’s only 30 nanometers thick, about 1/10th that of an average virus particle.

“Initially, we weren’t focused on energy storage, but during our exploration of material properties, we found a new physical phenomenon that we realized could be applied to energy storage,” Bae says in a statement, “and that was both very interesting and potentially much more useful.”

The sandwich structure isn’t quite fully conductive or nonconductive. This semiconducting material, then, allows the energy storage, with a density up to 19 times higher than commercially available ferroelectric capacitors, while still achieving 90 percent efficiency—also better than what’s currently available.

Submission + - Android 14 Storage Bug Has Users Locked Out of Their Devices (www.opp.today)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Android 14, the latest operating system from Google, is facing a major storage bug that is causing users to be locked out of their devices. This issue is particularly affecting users who utilize the “multiple profiles” feature. Reports suggest that the bug is comparable to being hit with “ransomware,” as users are unable to access their device storage. Initially, it was believed that this bug was limited to the Pixel 6, but it has since been discovered that it impacts a wider range of devices upgrading to Android 14. This includes the Pixel 6, 6a, 7, 7a, Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet. The Google issue tracker for this bug has garnered over 350 replies, but there has been no response from Google so far. The bug has been assigned the medium priority level of “P2” and remains unassigned, indicating that no one is actively investigating it.

Users who have encountered this storage bug have shared log files containing concerning messages such as “Failed to open directory /data/media/0: Structure needs cleaning.” This issue leads to various problematic situations, with some users experiencing boot loops, others stuck on a “Pixel is starting...” message, and some unable to take screenshots or access their camera app due to the lack of storage. Users are also unable to view files on their devices from a PC over USB, and the System UI and Settings repeatedly crash. Essentially, without storage, the device becomes practically unusable.

Android’s user-profile system, designed to accommodate multiple users and separate work and personal profiles, appears to be the cause of this rarely encountered bug. Users have reported that the primary profile, which is typically the most important one, becomes locked out.

Submission + - MIT Creates Implantable Device That Produces Insulin (mit.edu)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: MIT researchers unveiled an implantable device designed to provide insulin for Type 1 diabetes treatment and replace injections. The device incorporates many islet cells that produce insulin and features an onboard oxygen factory.

Type 1 diabetes patients are typically required to monitor blood glucose levels and self-administer daily insulin injections, but this process cannot replicate the body’s natural blood glucose control.

The newly developed device, approximately the size of a U.S. quarter, uses a proton-exchange membrane to divide water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen diffuses, and the oxygen is stored and provided to the islet cells via an oxygen-permeable membrane.

Research team member Robert Langer said the device could eventually treat other diseases that call for repeated therapeutic protein delivery.

Submission + - Intel DOWNFALL: New Vulnerability in AVX2/AVX-512 With Big Performance Hits (phoronix.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: This Patch Tuesday brings a new and potentially painful processor speculative execution vulnerability... Downfall, or as Intel prefers to call it is GDS: Gather Data Sampling. GDS/Downfall affects the gather instruction with AVX2 and AVX-512 enabled processors. At least the latest-generation Intel CPUs are not affected but Tigerlake / Ice Lake back to Skylake is confirmed to be impacted. There is microcode mitigation available but it will be costly for AVX2/AVX-512 workloads with GATHER instructions in hot code-paths and thus widespread software exposure particularly for HPC and other compute-intensive workloads that have relied on AVX2/AVX-512 for better performance.

Intel acknowledges that their microcode mitigation for Downfall will have the potential for impacting performance where gather instructions are in an applications' hot-path. In particular given the AVX2/AVX-512 impact with vectorization-heavy workloads, HPC workloads in particular are likely to be most impacted but we've also seen a lot of AVX use by video encoding/transcoding, AI, and other areas. Intel has not relayed any estimated performance impact claims from this mitigation. Well, to the press. To other partners Intel has reportedly communicated a performance impact up to 50%. That is for workloads with heavy gather instruction use as part of AVX2/AVX-512. Intel is being quite pro-active in letting customers know they can disable the microcode change if they feel they are not to be impacted by Downfall. Intel also believes pulling off a Downfall attack in the real-world would be a very difficult undertaking. However, those matters are subject to debate.

Submission + - An Example of a Very Sad Google Account Recovery Failure and Its Effects (vortex.com) 1

Submitted by Lauren Weinstein
Lauren Weinstein writes: All, I am doing something in this post that I’ve never done before over these many years. I’m going to share with you an example of what Google account recovery failure means to the people involved, and this is by no means the worst such case I’ve seen — not even close, unfortunately.

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