The Fourth US Navy Collision of the Year Was Ultimately Caused By UI Confusion
Yesterday, the U.S. Navy issued its report on the collisions of the USS Fitzgerald and USS John S. McCain this summer, which was the fourth U.S. Navy collision this year. "The Navy's investigation found that both collisions were avoidable accidents," reports Ars Technica. "And in the case of the USS McCain, the accident was in part caused by an error made in switching which control console on the ship's bridge had steering control. While the report lays the blame on training, the user interface for the bridge's central navigation control systems certainly played a role." From the report: According to the report, at 5:19am local time, the commanding officer of the McCain, Commander Alfredo J. Sanchez, "noticed the Helmsman (the watchstander steering the ship) having difficulty maintaining course while also adjusting the throttles for speed control." Sanchez ordered the watch team to split the responsibilities for steering and speed control, shifting control of the throttle to another watchstander's station -- the lee helm, immediately to the right (starboard) of the Helmsman's position at the Ship's Control Console. While the Ship's Control Console has a wheel for manual steering, both steering and throttle can be controlled with trackballs, with the adjustments showing up on the screens for each station. However, instead of switching just throttle control to the Lee Helm station, the Helmsman accidentally switched all control to the Lee Helm station. When that happened, the ship's rudder automatically moved to its default position (amidships, or on center line of the ship). The helmsman had been steering slightly to the right to keep the ship on course in the currents of the Singapore Strait, but the adjustment meant the ship started drifting off course.
At this point, everyone on the bridge thought there had been a loss of steering. In the commotion that ensued, the commanding officer and bridge crew lost track of what was going on around them. Sanchez ordered the engines slowed, but the lee helmsman only slowed the port (left) throttle, because the throttle controls on-screen were not "ganged" (linked) at the time as the result of the switch-over of control. The ship continued to turn uncontrolled to port -- putting the ship on a collision course with the Liberian-flagged chemical carrier Alnic MC.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/skBc8zJl2V0/the-fourth-us-navy-collision-of-the-year-was-ultimately-caused-by-ui-confusion
Google Explains Tuesday's Drive, Docs Bug That Marked Some Files As Violating Terms of Service
On Tuesday, Google's cloud-based word processing software was randomly flagging files for supposedly "violating" Google's Terms of Service, resulting in some users not being able to access or share their files. Google today explained the issue and addressed concerns that arose. 9to5Google reports: Several users on Tuesday morning reported no longer being able to open certain files they were working on in Docs, while others were locked out mid-edit. "On Tuesday, October 31, we mistakenly blocked access to some of our users' files, including Google Docs," Google said in a blog post. "This was due to a short-lived bug that incorrectly flagged some files as violating our terms of service (TOS)." Afterwards, Google provided a comment to Gizmodo noting that a code push made earlier that morning was at fault and that full access had been restored to users hours after the bug first arose. Today's clarification goes on to explain how that error on Tuesday caused Drive to "misinterpret" responses from the antivirus system designed to protect against malware, phishing, and spam. As a result, Docs "erroneously mark[ed] some files as TOS violations, thus causing access denials for users of those files."
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Ckb-A1jJM5o/google-explains-tuesdays-drive-docs-bug-that-marked-some-files-as-violating-terms-of-service
Trump Says Broadcom Is Moving Headquarters To US From Singapore
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: President Donald Trump said semiconductor company Broadcom Ltd. is returning its headquarters to the U.S. from Singapore. Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan joined Trump Thursday in the Oval Office for the announcement. Tan said the move to domicile the company in the U.S. would bring $20 billion in revenue into the country. The two men didn't specify the site of the new main location. Broadcom's website lists San Jose, California, as an existing corporate co-headquarters and has done so since the present company was created in 2016 in one of the semiconductor industry's largest acquisitions when Avago Technologies Ltd. acquired then-Broadcom Corp. The company's shares declined as much as 4 percent to $248.87 after the announcement. The stock had gained 47 percent this year through Wednesday's close.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/lryDaaLOEQA/trump-says-broadcom-is-moving-headquarters-to-us-from-singapore
SEC Warns Famous Crypto-currency Backers
A reader shares a report: Celebrities, sports figures and social media stars have been warned by US regulators about endorsing crypto-currencies. Paris Hilton, boxer Floyd Mayweather and others have all publicly backed digital currency funding drives. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the endorsements could break laws on selling securities. Those promoting crypto-currencies must say if they are being paid for the endorsement, it said. In its official warning, the SEC pointed to the growing numbers of public figures who have talked about the funding drives, known as Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), that crypto-currencies run to raise cash. About 270 separate crypto-cash start-ups have sought funds via ICOs in 2017, said the New York Times. In total, the ICOs have raised more than $3bn, it said. The SEC said any virtual coins or tokens bought by investors through an ICO were subject to the same laws governing the sale of stocks and shares sold via mainstream stock markets.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/kDKuIlIpUag/sec-warns-famous-crypto-currency-backers
The Mobile Internet Is the Internet
A reader shares a Quartz report: Think back to the mobile phone you had in 2010. It could access the internet, but it wasn't such a great experience. On average, people only spent 20% of their time online on their phones back then, according to Zenith, a media agency. Today, by contrast, we spend around 70% of our time on the internet on phones, based on estimates and forecasts for more than 50 countries covering two-thirds of the world's population. By 2019, Zenith says this will rise to close to 80%. What used to be called "mobile internet" is now just the internet.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/unXr7D4yM6k/the-mobile-internet-is-the-internet
Pirate TV Services Are Taking a Bite Out of Cable Company Revenue
TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found. From a report: Pirate services that offer live TV channels are apparently responsible for more downstream traffic each night than torrent downloads. Based on these figures, there may be 7 million US and Canadian subscribers to pirate TV services that generally cost about $10 a month, the report by Sandvine said. That amounts to $840 million of revenue a year. We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist. But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers, the report said.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/hARoJbg8gTs/pirate-tv-services-are-taking-a-bite-out-of-cable-company-revenue
Qualcomm Sues Apple For Contract Breach
Qualcomm has sued Apple, again, this time alleging that it violated a software license contract to benefit rival chipmaker Intel for making broadband modems, the latest salvo in a longstanding dispute between the two companies. From a report: Qualcomm alleged in a lawsuit filed in the California state court in San Diego on Wednesday that Apple used its commercial leverage to demand unprecedented access to the chipmaker's highly confidential software, including source code. Apple began to use Intel's broadband modem chips in the iPhone 7, which it launched last year.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/h1L4UHiJh8I/qualcomm-sues-apple-for-contract-breach
Timber Towers Are On the Rise in France
A reader shares a report: Spurred by concerns over climate change and the negative impacts of concrete manufacturing, architects and developers in France are increasingly turning to wood for their office towers and apartment complexes. Concrete was praised through much of the 20th century for its flexibility, functionality, and relative affordability. In France, the material ushered in an era of bold modernist architecture including housing by Auguste Perret and Le Corbusier. Today, however, wood is lauded for its smaller environmental footprint and the speed with which buildings can be assembled. "Wood had largely disappeared and was seen as a quaint material," says Steven Ware, a partner at the architecture firm Art & Build, whose latest wooden office building opened in Paris's 13th arrondissement earlier this summer. "[But] the energy it takes to put a concrete building up, to run it, and then dismantle it when it becomes obsolete was too much. Using mass timber in office buildings seemed like something we had to do." The production of cement, one of the main ingredients in concrete, generates an estimated 5 percent of the world's carbon emissions. Trees, in contrast, capture CO2, helping offset emissions produced by a typical building process. And then there's the string of other construction advantages that make wood economically appealing. It's lighter, which means digging smaller foundations in the ground. Crane costs come down, as they're no longer hauling blocks of cement hundreds of feet in the air. Driving a nail into a slab of wood requires a lot less energy than driving one into concrete. Months can be knocked off the construction timeline.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/PhMCEBP-j8E/timber-towers-are-on-the-rise-in-france
'Discovery of the Century': Mysterious Void Discovered In Egypt's Great Pyramid
New submitter klgds writes: The cavity is the first major inner structure discovered in the pyramid since the 1800s. Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza -- one of the wonders of the ancient world, and a dazzling feat of architectural genius -- contains a hidden void at least a hundred feet long, scientists said. The space's dimensions resemble those of the pyramid's Grand Gallery, the 153-foot-long, 26-foot-tall corridor that leads to the burial chamber of Khufu, the pharaoh for whom the pyramid was built. However, it remains unclear what lies within the space, what purpose it served, or if it's one or multiple spaces. The void is the first large inner structure discovered within the 4,500-year-old pyramid since the 1800s -- a find made possible by recent advances in high-energy particle physics. The results were published in the journal Nature. "This is definitely the discovery of the century," says archaeologist and Egyptologist Yukinori Kawae, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. "There have been many hypotheses about the pyramid, but no one even imagined that such a big void is located above the Grand Gallery."
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_a5xfoyDXgc/discovery-of-the-century-mysterious-void-discovered-in-egypts-great-pyramid
Bitcoin and Blockchain Are Among the Fastest-Growing Skills Online
As cryptocurrencies explode in popularity, employers are clamoring for workers with expertise in the emerging field. From a report: Demand for online freelancers who specialize in blockchain and bitcoin-related work surged last quarter, according to data compiled by Upwork, a website that connects freelancers with employers. The two skills were respectively the second and third fastest-growing skills on Upwork's platform. With the price of bitcoin having surged more than 500 percent this year, companies are rushing in to capitalize on the boom. Other skills in Upwork's list of fastest-growing skills include robotics (No. 1), as well as a cybersecurity specialty called penetration testing (No. 4) and a subfield in artificial intelligence called deep learning (No. 8).
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Jjg7Zayw1HM/bitcoin-and-blockchain-are-among-the-fastest-growing-skills-online
App Developer Access To iPhone X Face Data Spooks Some Privacy Experts
A reader shares a report: Apple won accolades from privacy experts in September for assuring that facial data used to unlock its new iPhone X would be securely stored on the phone itself. But Apple's privacy promises do not extend to the thousands of app developers who will gain access to facial data in order to build entertainment features for iPhone X customers, such as pinning a three-dimensional mask to their face for a selfie or letting a video game character mirror the player's real-world facial expressions. Apple allows developers to take certain facial data off the phone as long as they agree to seek customer permission and not sell the data to third parties, among other terms in a contract seen by Reuters. App makers who want to use the new camera on the iPhone X can capture a rough map of a user's face and a stream of more than 50 kinds of facial expressions. This data, which can be removed from the phone and stored on a developer's own servers, can help monitor how often users blink, smile or even raise an eyebrow.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/TdWrN9_d-Fg/app-developer-access-to-iphone-x-face-data-spooks-some-privacy-experts
Russia Hackers Had Targets Worldwide, Beyond US Election
Raphael Satter, Jeff Donn, and Justin Myers, reporting for Associated Press: The hackers who disrupted the U.S. presidential election had ambitions well beyond Hillary Clinton's campaign, targeting the emails of Ukrainian officers, Russian opposition figures, U.S. defense contractors and thousands of others of interest to the Kremlin, according to a previously unpublished digital hit list obtained by The Associated Press. The list provides the most detailed forensic evidence yet of the close alignment between the hackers and the Russian government, exposing an operation that stretched back years and tried to break into the inboxes of 4,700 Gmail users across the globe -- from the pope's representative in Kiev to the punk band Pussy Riot in Moscow. "It's a wish list of who you'd want to target to further Russian interests," said Keir Giles, director of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Cambridge, England, and one of five outside experts who reviewed the AP's findings. He said the data was "a master list of individuals whom Russia would like to spy on, embarrass, discredit or silence."
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/P5ICQZAdtAM/russia-hackers-had-targets-worldwide-beyond-us-election
The International Space Station Is Getting Its First Printer Upgrade in 17 Years
Lance Ulanoff, writing for Mashable: Somewhere, 254 miles above us, an astronaut is probably printing something. Ever since the International Space Station (ISS) welcomed its first residents in November of 2000, there have been printers on board. Astronauts use them to print out critical mission information, emergency evacuation procedures and, sometimes, photos from home. According to NASA, they print roughly 1,000 pages a month on two printers; one is installed on the U.S. side of the ISS, the other in the Russian segment. ISS residents do all this on 20-year-old technology. "When the printer was new, it was like 2000-era tech and we had 2000-era laptop computers. Everything worked pretty good," recalled NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, who brought the first printer up to the ISS. But "the printer's been problematic for the last five or six years," said Pettit who's spent a total of one year on the station. It's not that the Space Station has been orbiting with the same printer since Justin Timberlake was still N'Sync. NASA had dozens of this printer and, as one failed, they'd send up another identical model. But now it's time for something truly new. In 2018, NASA will send two brand new, specialized printers up to the station. However, figuring out the right kind of printer to send was a lot more complicated than you'd probably expect. NASA has turned to HP for its IT supply and needs. The agency requires the following things in its printer: print and handle paper management in zero gravity, handle ink waste during printing, be flame retardant, and be power efficient. HP, Mashable reports, has recommended the HP Envy 5600, its all-in-one (printer, scanner, copier, fax) device that retails for $129.99. The model has been modified, according to the report.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Ynpy6gtF83M/the-international-space-station-is-getting-its-first-printer-upgrade-in-17-years
Bitcoin Smashes Past $7,000 For the First Time
A reader shares a report: Bitcoin hit another all-time high Thursday morning, surpassing $7,000 for the first time. The cryptocurrency has had a bullish streak throughout the week following the CME's announcement that it will introduce bitcoin futures contracts. According to data from CoinDesk, the virtual currency reached an all-time high of $7,242.69 at about 7:08 a.m. ET. The jump in price saw the virtual coin rise by more than 7 percent on the day. A surge in the digital coin's value saw the total market value of all cryptocurrencies top $189 billion for the first time Thursday. The market cap of bitcoin alone is currently more than $121 billion, according to data from industry website Coinmarketcap.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/u7VhbG83M_Y/bitcoin-smashes-past-7000-for-the-first-time
Scientists Have Mathematical Proof That It's Impossible To Stop Aging
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Alert: Mathematically speaking, multicellular organisms like us will always have to deal with a cellular competition where only one side will win. And ultimately, that means our vitality will always come out as the loser. We have a pair of researchers from the University of Arizona to blame for this depressing conclusion, who crunched the numbers on a hypothesis involving the weeding out of unfit cells and found it amounted to a catch-22 situation. Aging -- and all of the biological changes that come with it -- is more or less the result of cells slowing down and losing their functions. But what if there was a way to encourage the more active cells to stick around at the expense of their sluggish siblings? Surely if we knocked off those old cells we could keep making pigments and collagen a little longer. Researchers have pinned hopes on reversing the inevitable decay of biochemistry by repairing DNA or extending the shrinking bits of chromosome called telomeres, for example. While it's good in theory, there is a catch. Another feature of aging is a number of cells start to populate like there's no tomorrow, reproducing in uncontrolled ways that look too close to cancer for comfort. According to the researchers, this means we're damned either way.
The way we grow old poses something of a mystery. If replicating biology is good enough to continue for generations, why do our own cells wind down after just a few decades? A simple answer is evolution isn't strong enough to weed out genes that only cause us grief after we've popped out a few offspring. But this model of aging adds a new element to the existing hypothesis -- even if evolution did select for eternal youth, competition inside our own bodies would see us to an inevitable grave. In other words, since multicellular organisms are the cumulative effect of bunches of cooperating cells, we logically can't have it both ways -- if you clear the way for 'younger' cells to keep your skin baby-smooth, you're just asking for the big C. The findings have been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/fx8MYbq_QO4/scientists-have-mathematical-proof-that-its-impossible-to-stop-aging
Source: https://slashdot.org/
