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Submission + - SPAM: Newly Discovered Molecule Fights Off Over 300 Kinds of Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “The molecule is called fabimycin, and further down the line it could be used to fight off some of the most stubborn infections that humans can get. The new potential treatment targets gram-negative bacteria, a group of hard-to-kill pathogens that are commonly behind infections of the urinary tract, lungs, and even the bloodstream.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition (newsweek.com)

Submitted by hesdeadjim99
hesdeadjim99 writes: A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers now. LLNL's paper.

Submission + - Some of UK's NHS patient notes not available for weeks due to cyber attack (independent.co.uk)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A cyber attack on a major supplier of IT systems to the NHS may leave hospitals without access to patients records for more than three weeks, according to an email to hospital staff.

'Oxford Health Foundation Trust, has declared a critical incident over the outage and has told staff the patient notes system may be down for longer than three weeks.

'In an email to staff, Oxford Health Foundation Trust said: “The cyber-attack targeted systems used to refer patients for care, including ambulances being dispatched, out-of-hours appointment bookings, triage, out of hours care, emergency prescriptions and safety alerts. It also targeted the finance system used by the Trust.'

The question I have is why it should take so long to restore the system from backups; 'weeks' is an unreasonable period. Anyone any thoughts?

Submission + - Linux Distro For Apple Silicon Macs Is Already Up and Running On M2 Chip (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Unlike Intel Macs, Apple silicon Macs were designed to run only Apple's software. But the developers on the Asahi Linux team have been working to change that, painstakingly reverse-engineering support for Apple's processors and other Mac hardware and releasing it as a work-in-progress distro that can actually boot up and run on bare metal, no virtualization required. The Asahi Linux team put out a new release today with plenty of additions and improvements. Most notably, the distro now supports the M1 Ultra and the Mac Studio and has added preliminary support for the M2 MacBook Pro (which has been tested firsthand by the team) and the M2 MacBook Air (which hasn't been tested but ought to work). Preliminary Bluetooth support for all Apple silicon Macs has also been added, though the team notes that it works poorly when connected to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network because "Wi-Fi/Bluetooth coexistence isn't properly configured yet."

There are still many other things that aren't working properly, including the USB-A ports on the Studio, faster-than-USB-2.0 speeds from any Type-C/Thunderbolt ports, and GPU acceleration, but progress is being made on all of those fronts. GPU work in particular is coming along, with a "prototype driver" that is "good enough to run real graphics applications and benchmarks" already up and running, though it's not included in this release. The Asahi team has said in the past that it expects support for new chips to be relatively easy to add to Asahi since Apple's chip designers frequently reuse things and don't make extensive hardware changes unless there's a good reason for it. Adding basic support for the M2 to Asahi happened over the course of a single 12-hour development session, and just "a few days" of additional effort were needed to get the rest of the hardware working as well as it does with M1-based Macs.

Submission + - Brain-Computer Interface Startup Implants First Device in US Patient (yahoo.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Synchron, a brain-computer interface startup, reportedly implanted its first device in a US patient earlier this month. The startup implanted a 1.5-inch device into the brain of an ALS patient at Mount Sinai West medical center in New York on July 6, Bloomberg first reported. The purpose of the device is to allow the patient to communicate — even after they have lost the ability to move — by using their thoughts to send emails and texts. Bloomberg reported that Synchron has already implanted the device in four patients in Australia who have been able to use the brain implant to send messages on WhatsApp and shop online.

Comment Back in the office we go (Score 1) 122

by pillageplunder (#62339859) Attached to: Have you returned to working in a physical office?

We having been working under a "Hybrid" model since June, 2021. We have been relocated to a smaller building where we need to be in the office 40% of our time. Oh joy. I work for a State Agency, and throughout the state, each agency has determined what is best for their employees. Some have not had to return to the office yet, even at this late date. To say that Morale has been impacted is to say the Grand Canyon has a bit of depth to it.

Submission + - SPAM: Fed Designs Digital Dollar That Handles 1.7 Million Transactions Per Second

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As the race against China’s development of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) known as the digital yuan continues, the U.S. Federal Reserve accomplished a feat in testing a design for a U.S. digital dollar that in one of two tests, managed to handle 1.7 million transactions per second. A report released last Thursday provided the initial findingsof research conducted as a collaboration between the Boston Fed and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dubbed 'Project Hamilton,' the report describes a theoretical high-performance and resilient transaction processor for a CBDC that was developed using open-source research software called ‘OpenCBDC’.

According to the Fed’s Report, a core processing engine for a hypothetical general purpose CBDC was created that produced one code base capable of handling 1.7 million transactions per second. According to the Fed, the vast majority of transactions reached settlement finality in under two seconds. The Fed revealed the design of the CBDC transaction processor was alsoreleasedon GitHub. According to the Boston Fed, the second phase of Project Hamilton will demonstrate how OpenCBDC will build upon the initial model to allow flexibility in design that will incorporate how policymakers may implement an actual CBDC.
Link to Original Source

Comment This ain't cheap (Score 1) 92

by pillageplunder (#62032977) Attached to: Airbus A340 Plane Lands On Antarctica For First Time

A boutique Aviation company flew 2500 miles, offloaded cargo in three hours, and returned. It most likely flew deadhead (empty) back. The A340-300 isn't cheap to fly...costing somewhere between $14,000 - $18,000 per hour to operate. While this is a first, and they have now proven it can be done, is it sustainable as a business model? Whomever winds up onboard one of these flights as a tourist is going to have to pay through the nose in order for the company to keep these jets flying. Arguably there are better aircraft out there and available to use on a route such as this, on the other hand, you fly what you have. It will be interesting to see how this shakes out from a business perspective.

Submission + - SPAM: NASA's Hubble Captures Blistering Pitch-Black Planet

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The oddball exoplanet, called WASP-12b, is one of a class of so-called “hot Jupiters,” gigantic, gaseous planets that orbit very close to their host star and are heated to extreme temperatures. The planet’s atmosphere is so hot that most molecules are unable to survive on the blistering day side of the planet, where the temperature is 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, clouds probably cannot form to reflect light back into space. Instead, incoming light penetrates deep into the planet’s atmosphere where it is absorbed by hydrogen atoms and converted to heat energy.

“We did not expect to find such a dark exoplanet,” said Taylor Bell of McGill University and the Institute for Research on Exoplanets in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, lead researcher of the Hubble study. “Most hot Jupiters reflect about 40 percent of starlight.”
Link to Original Source

Submission + - US Supreme Court: Patent Holders Must Prove Infringment (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: The Supreme Court issued a ruling that might help marginally curb patent madness. Ruling on a case between Medtronic and Mirowski Family Ventures, the court rules that the burden of proof in patent infringement cases is always on the patent holder. This is true even in the specific case at hand, in which Medtronic sought a declaratory judgement that it was not violating the Mirowski patents.

Submission + - Google faces off against Intellectual Ventures in landmark patent trial (reuters.com)

Submitted by enharmonix
enharmonix writes: Although Google initially invested in Intellectual Ventures, a patent holding firm, the two have since parted ways and are about to face off in court over some technologies used in Motorola (and other) phones. This is an important battle and the timing is significant given Congress's recent interest in patent reform.

Submission + - Engineers: Traffic Studies Use Simulation Software, Not Lane Closings (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: The so called traffic study that closed New Jersey access lanes on the heavily traveled George Washington Bridge last September has left engineers scratching their heads because in modern America, simulation software is used instead of closing down lanes. One of the best sources for simulation data are video camera systems that use software to count vehicles on roadways. Traffic studies use microscopic traffic simulations to create virtual environments that can model driver behavior to road changes with exacting detail. Instead, the Port Authority, under Gov. Chris Christie, shut down two of the three access lanes for four days last September from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge without warning the public, citing a "traffic study." "I would be pretty confident that if we knew exactly which lanes are closed we could replicate that, and it would show exactly how bad the backups are going to be," said Lorenzo Rotoli, an engineer and vice president at Fisher Associates, a civil engineering firm in New York that works on roads, bridges and signal systems.

Comment Testing Methodology vs Cost Effectiveness. (Score 1) 250

by pillageplunder (#45942811) Attached to: Target Confirms Point-of-Sale Malware Was Used In Attack

For Retailers and Credit card providers both, it appears their ability to understand the validity of robust security testing and practices revolves around cost. Not having to pay any perceived penalty due to a data breach means these corporate types can assign a relatively low risk to data breaches. Low risk usually means low test efforts as well. And this is what we as consumers appear to be satisfied with. I'm more of the opinion that if you have a data breach, it should cost you as a company X dollars per person affected...and start X somewhere above 5 figures. Each person would get that payout. How serious then would corporations take data security?

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