canopic jug writes:Two Finnish news sites, YLE and Helsinki Times, are reporting that Jamie Hyneman of Mythbusters fame has begun a five year stint as professor of "practice" at the Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland. He was previously awarded an honorary doctorate by the same institution and there is a prototyping lab named after him where students can design, build, and test prototypes. He is said to be on site at the moment but the first lecture is scheduled to take place via proprietary videoconferencing software.
Top500: No Exascale, Fugaku Still Reigns, Polaris Debuts at #12MrPlow writes:Submitted via IRC for BytramSource: https://www.hpcwire.com/2021/11/15/top500-no-exascale-fugaku-still-reigns-polaris-debuts-at-12/
Just days after voting to water down restrictions on fossil fuel use at COP26, India finds itself struggling to deal with the consequences of fossil fuel use.New Delhi Braces for Emergency Measures as Toxic Smog Worsensupstart writes:New Delhi braces for emergency measures as toxic smog worsens:
sgleysti writes:I'd like to know Soylentils' takes on the following Sci-Fi thought experiment:In the near future, scientists create a safe, non-invasive, and irreversible procedure that causes a person to perceive reality without any human biases. It is offered to the general public at no cost and takes 15 minutes with no convalescence time or physical restrictions. The effects take hold gradually over the course of 24 hours and are thereafter permanent.Would you do it?Original SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
upstart writes:Team engineers new way to get medication past blood-brain barrier: UT Dallas researchers method uses light and nanoparticles to pry open tight junction:
hubie writes:It is no surprise that driver lane changes in traffic affects the flow of traffic itself. When the density of vehicles is low, it can lead to efficiencies in traffic flow. However, when the density reaches a certain level, it has the opposite effect. In this situation, when a driver moves into another lane, the vehicle behind the lane-changing vehicle suffers a delay, which leads to a delay imposed upon the vehicle behind it, etc., that compounds itself as a delay that ripples through the traffic behind. There are several traffic flow models that simulate this, but they can be contradictory in their results. A group of researchers from the Department of Traffic Management School at the People's Public Security University of China obtained quantitative data on this effect by flying DJI Phantom 4 drones over a target vehicle driving in congested traffic. They found that a single lane change (LC) adds between 3.9–9.5 seconds of delay to the cars in the trarget lane.A key dependency observed, which would not surprise too many people who are accustomed to driving in congested traffic, was the space between vehicles. They found that 5.5 meters was a break point between behavior for the trailing vehicle in the next lane. It was found that when the distance between vehicles is less than 5.5 m, the vehicle following the target vehicle tends to drive at a constant speed or decelerate, but when the distance between vehicles is greater than 5.5 m, the vehicle following the target vehicle tends to first accelerate to prevent the target vehicle from entering the lane (Ed note: I've always thought of this as "Philadelphia driving etiquette"), but then the speed gradually decreases when the target vehicle is forcibly inserted.
mhajicek writes:Zero Motorcycles announced their groundbreaking new battery "technology", in which they sell you a large capacity battery in a motorcycle with powerful motors and advanced traction control systems, and then lock all that away behind a software paywall that you can unlock (for a fee) in their app.https://newatlas.com/motorcycles/zero-motorcycles-2022-battery-paid-upgrades/Zero is not the first vehicle company to do this sort of thing. Notably, Tesla sells vehicles with capabilities that can be unlocked via software "upgrades". This strategy is also common in the CNC machine tool industry; it's long frustrated machinists that they can buy a machine with all the hardware, but then have a sizable portion of memory, advanced motion smoothing, and other functions locked behind activation keys, which often cost several thousand dollars. In that industry at least, if you know the right people and have a machine with a common control, you can get what you need to unlock it through other sources.I anticipate a similar approach in the vehicle market, which has long sold "tuner" chips and has a great deal of modding enthusiasts.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIJiXNzpRMYOriginal SubmissionRead more of this story at SoylentNews.
canopic jug writes:Software analyst Geoff Chappell was the expert hired by Caldera to dig into the infamous AARD code. Recently he made a review of the discovery, publication, earlier work, personal work, and scale of effort involved in analyzing the AARD code, from a historical perpective. He doesn't adress the ethical or political repercussions of the code. However, being a principal in the analysis, he is able to set the record straight on some technical and legal facts.The AARD code is from back when MS Windows was still just a graphical shell on top of a text-based disk operating system (DOS) and existed briefly as some XOR-encrypted, self-modifying, deliberately obfuscated machine code and using a variety of undocumented DOS structures and functions. The purpose of the code was to detect competing DOSes, specifically, the then popular DR-DOS, and throw up an unnecessary warning when detected.
DannyB writes:(Deliberately keeping summary politically neutral. There will be plenty of blame to go around if this goes anywhere.)House Energy and Commerce Committee Unveil Comprehensive Strategy to Establish a National Privacy Standard:
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