Month: October 2016

Enlarge / The view of Alpha Centauri A & B from the night sky in Chile. (Bright stars to the upper left of the mountain) (credit: ESO)

The nearest star system to the Sun, α Centauri, has been all the rage after the discovery of an Earth-sized world in the habitable zone around the smallest of its three stars, Proxima Centauri. Scientists, however, are equally eager to learn more about the planetary systems around α Centauri's two larger Sun-like stars, α Centauri A and B. They might offer an environment still more conducive for an Earth-like planet.

Although NASA has plans to eventually develop optical telescopes that might be able to image planets around these stars, some scientists say we should not wait that long. Moreover, these scientists say that, with a modestly sized telescope, we could start looking for Earth-like worlds around Centauri A and B by the end of the decade. To that end, several organizations plan to announce a privately-led, non-profit effort to do just that. The project, titled “Project Blue,” will be announced on Tuesday.

Project Blue takes its name from the famous Pale Blue Dot image taken by Voyager in 1980, when the probe was about 6 billion km from Earth. Our planet filled just a single blue pixel against the vast, black, seemingly endless heavens. Project Blue aims capture such an image of one or more Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone around α Centauri A or B.

In August, Microsoft announced that it was going to change the patching model used by Windows 7 and 8.1—as well as Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2—to something close to that of Windows 10.

In a break from Microsoft's older operating systems, Windows 10's monthly updates incorporate both security and non-security fixes into a single monolithic update. These updates combine not only each month's new fixes, but also the fixes from previous months. A similar system is being offered to those older operating systems. The patch on Oct. 11 is the first time this new system is being used.

The system for the legacy operating systems has complexities that Windows 10's patching lacks. There will be three series of updates in total. Two of these updates will be a monthly roll-up that combines security and non-security fixes, as well as a monthly security update that contains only that month's security fixes without any previous ones. They will be released on the second Tuesday of each month, known as "Patch Tuesday." The third update will be a preview of the next month—which combines the current month's cumulative update with the next month's non-security fixes—and will be published on the third Tuesday of each month. This will give users the ability to test the non-security portion of each month's patch before it's rolled out.

Enlarge (credit: BusinessKorea)

Samsung has just released a public statement telling customers to return all Galaxy Note 7s, even the replacement units distributed during what we will now have to call the "first" Galaxy Note 7 recall.

That's right—Samsung is issuing a second recall for the Note 7. Even if you've returned your phone and gotten a replacement, you need to return the device again.

Here's Samsung's statement:

Enlarge / Cleaning off the inscription on the rental agreement stele. (credit: DHA)

The ancient city of Teos lies on an isthmus reaching outward from Turkey's west coast into the emerald waters of the Mediterranean. Over 2,000 years ago, it was one of many Ionian Greek cities that dotted the coastline and islands here. Today it's an archaeological goldmine, but not just for its crumbling temples and amphitheater. Scientists have excavated hundreds of stele, or inscribed stone tablets, which give us a peek inside the bureaucracy that ran this city for centuries. Even the most mundane documents contain disturbing elements for modern readers, like a 58-line lease agreement recently unearthed by Akdeniz University archaeologist Mustafa Adak, which contains directions on how rental slaves should be treated.

Carved into a 1.5 meter-long marble stele, the document goes into great detail about the property and its amenities. We learn that it's a tract of land that was given to the Neos, a group of men aged 20-30 associated with the city's gymnasium. In ancient Greece, a gymnasium wasn't just a place for exercise and public games—it was a combination of university and professional training school for well-off citizens. Neos were newbie citizens who often had internship-like jobs in city administration or politics. The land described in the lease was given to the Neos by a wealthy citizen of Teos, in a gift that was likely half-generosity, half-tax writeoff. Because the land contained a shrine, it was classified as a "holy" place that couldn't be taxed. Along with the land, the donor gave the Neos all the property on it, including several slaves.

Enlarge (credit: Sujay Desai/Berkeley Lab)

Conventional silicon-based electronics are rapidly approaching a fundamental barrier. Below about five nanometers, quantum effects make their behavior unpredictable. That's led to research into alternative materials such as carbon nanotubes. Now, a large collaboration has taken a different material—molybdenum disulfide, or MoS₂—and used its distinctive properties to craft a transistor that has a gate size of just one nanometer.

Unfortunately, other parts of the hardware are quite a bit larger than that, and we have no way of producing these in bulk yet. But the work validates that MoS₂'s properties can allow us to shrink electronics down below silicon's limits.

The idea behind the work is that a property of silicon we normally view as beneficial becomes an issue once things get small enough. That property is the mobility of electrons within silicon. On the positive side, that means the electrons move with less resistance when we want them to. It also means that they move more readily when we don't want them to, which causes an increase in current leaking across transistors when they're supposed to be off. Once silicon features get small enough (that 5nm limit mentioned above), leakage becomes large enough that it's impossible to tell whether a transistor is on or off.

Samsung

There’s a new black cylindrical desktop in town, but unfortunately for fans of the nearly three-year-old Mac Pro, this one isn’t from Apple. Samsung’s “ArtPC Pulse” desktop, revealed today via Amazon listings, isn’t quite the PC version of the Mac Pro, but that description isn’t far off.

The port layout in particular is distinctly Mac Pro-esque, though not as high-end. It has four USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, an audio jack, an Ethernet port, an HDMI port, an SD card reader, and a power connector arranged vertically on its back. That power plug implies that, like the Mac Pro, the system saves some space on your floor with an internal power supply, which is a nice touch.

Enlarge / Prepare to hail in 2017.

If you were quick enough on the draw this morning, you got a sneak-peek at a clearly unfinished trailer for the first major-film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower. The leak, courtesy of an upload to a Japanese-language Vimeo account, confirmed a few things, including a February 2017 release, how actor Idris Elba will look as the series' Roland Deschain, and how this film apparently diverges from the series' literary genesis.

"What happens in one world echoes in others," actor/narrator Idris Elba says as the trailer flashes post-apocalyptic footage that a young boy sees in his sleep. "These aren't dreams," the boy tells a psychologist. "There's another world out there." Indeed, this trailer contains approximately 50 percent footage from an Earth-like world, in which teenage hero Jake Chambers sees things that other humans cannot, including a catastrophic event that could kill millions of people.

The trailer follows Chambers (played by Tom Taylor) as he pieces together clues from his visions to find a portal to Deschain's world—and then convinces the series' gunslinger to come to Earth and save it. Deschain can be seen walking through fantastical places, jumping through windows, and aiming a pair of six-shooters at one giant, green monster in a forest.

Enlarge (credit: Soylent)

Soylent’s new snack bar, packing 12.5 percent of your daily nutrients, supposedly “makes the afternoon slump a thing of the past.” But that may only be true if that “slump” doesn’t involve you over a toilet.

According to a discussion on Soylent’s website and several Reddit threads, customers say that some of the bars caused them gastrointestinal distress, including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. On the Soylent thread, user Raylingh has tallied 33 reports since September 7, just two months after the company started making the bars. Generally, customers say that stomach problems arise a few hours after eating a bad bar and pass within a day or two with no other symptoms. These shared illnesses easily meet the description of food poisoning, and many users have ruled out the possibility of food allergies, noting that they had eaten the bars and other Soylent products in the past with no problems.

The reports could become a sticky mess for the bars’ maker, Rosa Labs, which made a splash two years ago with its first Soylent product, a meal-replacement drink. The company quickly tried to minimize the issue, noting the small number of reports. Rosa Labs aggressively defended its quality control after extensive internal testing. In an official statement, the company said: “After these reports, we have retrieved remaining bars from our consumers and have personally consumed many of the remaining bars without adverse effects. We have also sent them for further microbiological testing and all tests have come back negative. Based on this we remain very confident in the safety of the bars.”