Month: August 2022

Enlarge / The story of a conquest: The fruiting body of a parasitic fungus erupts from the body of its victim. (credit: Roberto García-Roa/CC BY 4.0)

The striking photograph above vividly captures the spores of a parasitic "zombie" fungus (Ophiocordyceps) as they sprout from the body of a host fly in exquisite detail. Small wonder it won the 2022 BMC Ecology and Evolution image competition, featured along with eight other honorees in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. The winning images were chosen by the journal editor and senior members of the journal’s editorial board. Per the journal, the competition "gives ecologists and evolutionary biologists the opportunity to use their creativity to celebrate their research and the intersection between art and science."

Roberto García-Roa, an evolutionary biologist and conservation photographer affiliated with both the University of Valencia in Spain and Lund University in Sweden, snapped his award-winning photograph while trekking through a Peruvian jungle. The fungus in question belongs to the Cordyceps family. There are more than 400 different species of Cordyceps fungi, each targeting a particular species of insect, whether it be ants, dragonflies, cockroaches, aphids, or beetles. Consider Cordyceps an example of nature’s own population control mechanism to ensure that eco-balance is maintained.

According to García-Roa, Ophiocordyceps, like its zombifying relatives, infiltrates the host's exoskeleton and brain via spores scattered in the air that attach to the host body. Once inside, the spores sprout long tendrils called mycelia that eventually reach into the brain and release chemicals that make the unfortunate host the fungi’s zombie slave. The chemicals compel the host to move to the most favorable location for the fungus to thrive and grow. The fungus slowly feeds on the host, sprouting new spores throughout the body as one final indignity.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | SOPA Images )

One of the creators of the Botometer—a web tool Elon Musk used to estimate Twitter's spam percentage for a court filing—has reportedly said that Musk's calculation "doesn't mean anything." Kai-Cheng Yang, a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University, "questioned the methodology used by Mr Musk's team and told the BBC they had not approached him before using the tool," a BBC article said today.

A Musk court filing on August 4 claimed a Botometer analysis of Twitter firehose data in the first week of July "shows that, during that timeframe, false or spam accounts accounted for 33 percent of visible accounts." But as Yang pointed out, the Botometer provides scores from 0 to 5—with 5 being the most bot-like—and Musk's court filing didn't say where he set the cutoff between human and bot.

"In order to estimate the prevalence [of bots] you need to choose a threshold to cut the score," Yang told the BBC. "If you change the threshold from a three to a two then you will get more bots and less human." Because Musk's court filing "doesn't make the details clear," Musk "has the freedom to do whatever he wants. So the number to me, it doesn't mean anything," Yang said.

Enlarge (credit: Andre Malerba/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In a few weeks, Ethereum is slated to undergo the most significant change in its seven-year history. Until now, the Ethereum blockchain has been secured using a method called "proof-of-work," which consumes more electricity than the entire nation of Belgium. Next month's switch to a new method called "proof-of-stake" is expected to cut Ethereum's energy consumption by a factor of 1,000.

The stakes are high. A botched transition could mean chaos for the many crypto projects built on top of Ethereum. A smooth transition would be the culmination of years of careful planning by Ethereum's core developers. Over the last year, developers have repeatedly pushed back the date of "the Merge" to give themselves more time to prepare. They completed a final dress rehearsal on August 10, clearing the way to make the switch in mid-September.

The most immediate consequence of a successful Merge will be to put the world's Ethereum miners out of work. Over the last seven years, thousands of people have bought high-end graphics cards to help maintain the Ethereum blockchain—and to earn newly created ether in the process. The new system for updating the Ethereum blockchain doesn't require the same kind of beefy hardware—or the massive electricity bill that goes with it. So the price of used graphics cards might continue to fall as Ethereum miners exit the industry.

Enlarge / The Lucid Air Sapphire has been designed to work around a racetrack. (credit: Lucid)

On Friday at Monterey Car Week, the electric vehicle startup Lucid added a new variant to its portfolio: the Lucid Air Sapphire. It's the first of a new sub-brand for Lucid, adding even more performance to cars that were hardly underpowered to begin with. With an extra motor in the mix, the company's new car should hit 60 mph (98 km/h) in less than two seconds and 100 mph (160 km/h) in less than four seconds while keeping a top speed in excess of 200 mph (321 km/h). Such performance isn't cheap, however; when the car goes into limited production next year, it will do so with a $249,000 price tag.

The inspiration for both the car's color and its name came from American racing history.

"Sapphire is the embodiment of what ultra-high-performance luxury means to Lucid. [It] is among the most valued gemstones, prized for their brilliance, color, and hardness," said Derek Jenkins, SVP of brand and design at Lucid. "Imperial Blue has long been the de facto national color for American motorsports teams engaged in international competitions. As Lucid’s dedicated ultra-high-performance brand, Sapphire references this history while setting new standards for innovation and technology."

Enlarge / A splash image for Nuvia from the company's blog. (credit: Nuvia)

Qualcomm is apparently plotting a return to the server chip market. The company is overhauling its CPU offerings after acquiring the upstart chip design company Nuvia in 2021. Nuvia was founded by three high-ranking engineers from Apple's chip division, with the original goal of designing ARM server chips (though it never launched a product). After Qualcomm bought the company, it seemingly pivoted its new chip division from server chips to laptops and phones. Now, according to a new report from Bloomberg, Nuvia's original goal of building server chips will be allowed to continue.

The report says Qualcomm is "seeking customers for a product stemming from last year’s purchase of chip startup Nuvia" with Amazon Web Services as one of the first companies that "agreed to take a look at Qualcomm’s offerings." Apple has proven to the world that ARM chips can scale up, and on laptops, they've proven to be more efficient than the x86 chips from Intel and AMD. Companies like Amazon have even started making their in-house server chips based on ARM's licensable CPU designs.

Doing better than ARM's off-the-shelf CPU designs will be the real challenge for Qualcomm. Despite having a near-monopoly on high-end Android phone CPUs, Qualcomm isn't really a CPU company. Qualcomm SoCs feature CPUs straight from ARM, the same as many other vendors like Mediatek, Samsung, and Huawei's HiSilicon. What keeps Qualcomm on top is all the non-CPU parts—mainly its hyper-aggressive licensing around its modems and cellular patients. Qualcomm owns enough basic cellular patents that you need a license from them to sell a phone no matter what, and by bundling a cheaper patent license with its own chips, Qualcomm can squeeze out the competition. Qualcomm does some good work in GPUs and modem design, but it has never paid much attention to the CPU part of its SoC offering and is currently several generations behind the market leader, Apple.

Enlarge / Ally debit card owners are reporting fraudulent charges at a steady cadence over the past week. (credit: Getty Images)

Ben Langhofer, a financial planner and single father of three in Wichita, Kansas, decided to start a side business. He had made a handbook for his family, laying out core values, a mission statement, and a constitution. He wanted to help other families put their beliefs into a real book, one they could hold and display.

So Langhofer hired web developers about two years ago and set up a website, customer relationship management system, and payment processing. On Father's Day, he launched MyFamilyHandbook.com. He's had some modest success and has spoken with larger groups about bulk orders, but business has been mostly quiet so far.

That's how Langhofer knew something was wrong on Friday, August 11, when a woman from California called about a fraudulent charge. He checked his merchant account and saw nearly 800 transactions.

Enlarge / The Framework Laptop motherboard's 3D-printed case design. Lenovo has a bone to pick with the circular power button design. (credit: Framework)

If you bought the original Framework Laptop and wanted to upgrade its motherboard to the new version so you can benefit from the extra performance of a 12th-generation Core CPU, the company doesn't want you to throw your old motherboard out. To that end, Framework designed and released an open source design for a 3D-printable motherboard case, making it easy to repurpose an old Framework motherboard as a makeshift mini desktop PC.

But Lenovo has taken issue with this case design, according to a legal complaint shared via Framework's Twitter account yesterday. At issue is the design of the case's power button, pictured above, which looks like a circle or letter "O" segmented into three parts by straight lines. Lenovo's legal team thinks that circle looks like the stylized "O" in Lenovo's Legion brand logo. And they have a point, even if we don't think it's very likely that people would mix up a gaming laptop from a major PC manufacturer and a cheap 3D-printed plastic case for a niche laptop motherboard.

The segmented letter "O" appears in marketing materials and printed on the lids of Lenovo's Legion laptops. (credit: Lenovo)

Fortunately for Framework, the "broken O" that Lenovo is upset about doesn't appear anywhere on the Framework Laptop—it uses the company's standard gear-shaped logo on its lid and keyboard, so Framework won't need to make costly changes or dump any components it has already spent money on.