The Debian advisory says affected users need to disable hyper-threading “immediately” in their BIOS or UEFI settings, because the processors can “dangerously misbehave when hyper-threading is enabled.”

Symptoms can include “application and system misbehaviour, data corruption, and data loss”.

Henrique de Moraes Holschuh, who authored the Debian post, notes that all operating systems, not only Linux, are subject to the bug.

Source: Intel’s Skylake and Kaby Lake CPUs have nasty microcode bug

Here’s hoping your mobo supplier releases a BIOS / UEFI update soon…

We present simple tongues consisting of fluorescent polyelectrolytes or chimeric green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) to discriminating 33 different whiskies according to their country of origin (Ireland, US, or Scotland), brand, blend status (blend or single malt), age, and taste (rich or light). The mechanism of action for these tongues is differential quenching of the fluorescence of the poly(aryleneethynylene)s or the GFPs by the complex mixture of colorants (vanillin, vanillic acid, oak lactones, tannins, etc.; the interactome) extracted from the oak barrels and added caramel coloring. The differential binding and signal generation of the interactomes to the polymers and proteins result from hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions. The collected quenching data, i.e., the response patterns, were analyzed by linear discriminant analysis. Our tongues do not need any sample preparation and are equal or superior to state-of-the-art mass spectrometric methods with respect to speed, resolution, and efficiency of discrimination.

A pioneering new technique that encourages the wonder material graphene to “talk” could revolutionise the global audio and telecommunications industries.

Researchers from the University of Exeter have devised a ground-breaking method to use graphene to generate complex and controllable sound signals. In essence, it combines speaker, amplifier and graphic equaliser into a chip the size of a thumbnail.

Traditional speakers mechanically vibrate to produce sound, with a moving coil or membrane pushing the air around it back and forth. It is a bulky technology that has hardly changed in more than a century.

This innovative new technique involves no moving parts. A layer of the atomically thin material graphene is rapidly heated and cooled by an alternating electric current, and transfer of this thermal variation to the air causes it to expand and contract, thereby generating sound waves.

Though the conversion of heat into sound is not new, the Exeter team are the first to show that this simple process allows sound frequencies to be mixed together, amplified and equalised – all within the same millimetre-sized device. With graphene being almost completely transparent, the ability to produce complex sounds without physical movement could open up a new golden generation of audio-visual technologies, including mobile phone screens that transmit both pictures and sound.

Source: Good vibrations no longer needed for speakers as research encourages graphene to talk

Researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China created a quantum device, called a boson sampling machine, that can now carry out calculations for five photons, but at a speed 24,000 times faster than previous experiments. Pan Jianwei, the lead scientist on the project, said that though their device was already (only) 10 to 11 times faster at carrying out the calculations than the first electronic digital computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, in running the classical algorithm, their machine would eclipse all of the world’s supercomputers in a few years. “Our architecture is feasible to be scaled up to a larger number of photons and with a higher rate to race against increasingly advanced classical computers,” they said in the research paper published in Nature Photonics. This device is said to be the first quantum computer beating a real electronic classical computer in practice. Scientists estimate that the current faster supercomputers would struggle to estimate the behavior of 20 photons.

Ranasinghe and his team used an RGB colour sensor and a pH sensor to capture the colour and acidity of a freshly poured glass of lemonade. This data was sent to a special tumbler in another location that was filled with water. An electrode around the rim of the tumbler mimicked the sourness of the lemonade by stimulating the drinker’s taste buds with a pulse of electricity. LED lights replicated the colour.

Source: Virtual lemonade sends colour and taste to a glass of water | New Scientist

ntel’s new Optane memory is, according to Intel, an entirely new type of computer memory. It’s based on the 3D Xpoint memory architecture Intel announced back in July 2015. It’s as fast as the DRAM memory found in every computer used today, but as stable as the NAND memory found in the SSDs central to most of your pricier laptops.
[…]
And according to Intel, when its slotted into a computer alongside DRAM it speeds that computer up incredibly—giving you the kind of benefits traditionally only seen when you use a solid state drive. Intel claims computers power on twice as fast as they would without Optane, browsers launch five times faster, and games can launch up to 67 percent faster.

Intel Optane memory works as a kind of supercharger for a computer’s storage system. It doesn’t replace any components already in a computer. Instead it’s an add-on, clipped into the motherboard. In a computer’s processes Optane memory sits between the hard drive and the processor—remembering regularly accessed data, like RAM might, but retaining that information even when a program is closed or the computer is turned off.
[…]
Currently Optane memory will only be available for desktop computers with Kaby Lake processors and “Optane memory ready” motherboards (check the documentation for your motherboard to confirm)
[…]
For people who currently own a computer that’s Optane memory ready, it will fit into the M.2 slot on your motherboard—the same one currently used by the fastest solid state drives available, and as with DRAM memory, more is better. Optane memory will come in two sizes when it goes on sale April 24: 16GB ($44) and 32GB ($77).

Source: Intel Claims Its Magical New Memory Will Speed Your Computer Up for Cheap

IBM Q is an industry-first initiative to build commercially available universal quantum computers for business and science. While technologies like AI can find patterns buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen and the number of possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous ever to be processed by classical computers.

Source: IBM Q – US

Scientists have trained a quantum computer to recognize trees. That may not seem like a big deal, but the result means that researchers are a step closer to using such computers for complicated machine learning problems like pattern recognition and computer vision.

The team used a D-Wave 2X computer, an advanced model from the Burnaby, Canada–based company that created the world’s first quantum computer in 2007

Sciencemag.org

In a pilot starting in the north of the Netherlands, Weee Nederland is asking packet couriers to accept old electronics after delivering packages. Hopefully for recycling. If so, this sounds really good.

Pakketbezorger neemt oude apparaten mee

The availability of a universal quantum computer may have a fundamental impact on a vast number of research fields and on society as a whole. An increasingly large scientific and industrial community is working toward the realization of such a device. An arbitrarily large quantum computer may best be constructed using a modular approach. We present a blueprint for a trapped ion–based scalable quantum computer module, making it possible to create a scalable quantum computer architecture based on long-wavelength radiation quantum gates. The modules control all operations as stand-alone units, are constructed using silicon microfabrication techniques, and are within reach of current technology. To perform the required quantum computations, the modules make use of long-wavelength radiation–based quantum gate technology. To scale this microwave quantum computer architecture to a large size, we present a fully scalable design that makes use of ion transport between different modules, thereby allowing arbitrarily many modules to be connected to construct a large-scale device. A high error–threshold surface error correction code can be implemented in the proposed architecture to execute fault-tolerant operations. With appropriate adjustments, the proposed modules are also suitable for alternative trapped ion quantum computer architectures, such as schemes using photonic interconnects.

Source: Blueprint for a microwave trapped ion quantum computer

Backblaze has recorded and saved daily hard drive statistics from the drives in our data centers since April 2013. At the end of 2016 we had 73,653 spinning hard drives. Of that number, there were 1,553 boot drives and 72,100 data drives.

[…]

In 2016, three drives models ended the year with zero failures, albeit with a small number of drives. Both the 4 TB Toshiba and the 8 TB HGST models went the entire year without a drive failure. The 8 TB Seagate (ST8000NM0055) drives, which were deployed in November 2016, also recorded no failures.

The total number of failed drives was 1,225 for the year. That’s 3.36 drive failures per day or about 5 drives per workday, a very manageable workload. Of course, that’s easy for me to say, since I am not the one swapping out drives.

The overall hard drive failure rate for 2016 was 1.95%. That’s down from 2.47% in 2015 and well below the 6.39% failure rate for 2014.

Source: 2016 Hard Drive Reliabilty Benchmark Stats

It starts with the type of headset you need. You have PNR = passive noise reduction, ANR = active noise reduction and earpiece type headsets.

PNR relies on the shell and the seal (which is gel or foam [gel when broken will leak and requires a full replacement of the seal, foam will live through it. Apparently foam also works better around spectacles / sunglasses. Gel tends to offer slightly better noise cancellation]) to cancel the noise of the propeller. ANR send out noise cancellation signals to cancel the noise of the prop. These require batteries. The noise cancellation qualities are usually measured in db (eg 24 dB NRR)

Other differences are
* Are there volume buttons on one or both earpieces
* can you select mono / stereo? Usually you just want mono
* is there a music input for your ipod / phone
* bluetooth onboard?
* weight
* adjustability of the headband (NB large adjustable screws are prone to breakage and banging into stuff)
* material of the headband (you want metal, as it is more adjustable and less prone to breaking)
* quality and materiaal of the padding around the headband (for comfort)
* the quality of the speakers
* is it a fixed or adjustable boom for the mic
* the quality of the mic (how well the mic filters ambient noise and automatically starts transmitting when you start speaking)
* price

Some more information can be found in 2015 plane and pilot headset buyers guide

NB. If you get gel ear seals, make sure you get some protective covers: they will help save the gel seals and also keep your ears at a more comfortable temperature. The covers are very cheap and replacement ear seals are pretty expensive.

Apparently it’s better to have PNR than a poor ANR headset, poor ANR headsets are pretty disastrous.

Bose headsets are the absolute best in ANR, followed closely by Lightspeed. Prices vary from $ 800,- to $ 1300,-

In the PNR world, David Clark is the old world standard but they are quite expensive (and expensive!)

So the one I originally wanted was the Kore Aviation KA-1 $ 150,- with carrying case and foam ear seals. Unfortunately they wouldn’t ship to the Netherlands, so there was no way. (the ear covers are here)

In the end I bought the Rugged Air RA900 headset with ear covers. They retail at $199 but I found them at Mypilotstore for $165 I am very happy with these, even though the first set they delivered had a broken speaker lead. Rugged Radios replaced the entire unit quickly and hassle free and I have had no problems since. The mic picks up spoken words immediately and the speakers are high quality.

Finally you have child headsets in prices ranging from $ 80 to upwards. I quite like the Rugged Air RA250 Child’s Headset but it doesn’t have a flexible boom mike, which I think is a drawback.

There is also the possibility to turn any headset into a bluetooth compatible unit for streaming music or picking up phone calls with this bluetooth streamer for $24,-

Happy flying!

Graphene, which was heretofore, the strongest material known to man, is made from an extremely thin sheet of carbon atoms arranged in two dimensions. But there’s one drawback: while notable for its thinness and unique electrical properties, it’s very difficult to create useful, three-dimensional materials out of graphene.

Now, a team of MIT researchers discovered that taking small flakes of graphene and fusing them following a mesh-like structure not only retains the material’s strength, but the graphene also remains porous. Based on experiments conducted on 3D printed models, researchers have determined that this new material, with its distinct geometry, is actually stronger than graphene – making it 10 times stronger than steel, with only five percent of its density.

Source: MIT Unveils New Material That’s Strongest and Lightest On Earth

Since 2013, Backblaze has published statistics and insights based on the hard drives in our data center. You’ll find links to those reports below. We also publish the data underlying these reports, so that anyone can reproduce them. You’ll find an overview of this data and the download links further down this page.

Source: Hard Drive Test Data – Determining Failure Rates and More

The team, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, designed the minuscule transistor with a working one-nanometre gate – far surpassing any industry expectation for reducing transistor sizes. In the scientific study, MoS2 transistors with 1-nanometer gate lengths, published today in the journal Science, the researchers describe a prototype device which uses a novel semiconductor material known as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs).

The transistor structure uses a single-walled carbon nanotube as the gate electrode and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) for the channel material, rather than silicon.

‘The semiconductor industry has long assumed that any gate below 5 nanometers wouldn’t work, so anything below that was not even considered,’ explained study lead Sujay Desai.

transistor_schematic670‘This research shows that sub-5-nanometre gates should not be discounted. Industry has been squeezing every last bit of capability out of silicon. By changing the material from silicon to MoS2, we can make a transistor with a gate that is just 1 nanometer in length, and operate it like a switch,’ he added.

For comparison, a piece of paper is about 100,000 nanometres thick.

Source: Transistor smashes industry ‘limit’, measures just 1nm

what the researchers achieved was to sense movement finely enough to distinguish American Sign Language down the the digit level at better than 90 per cent; and better than 82 per cent for “single individual number text input”.
[…]
The researchers say the “micro motions” involved in finger gestures cause “a unique pattern in the time series of CSI values” (dubbed “CSI waveforms” in the paper), and those waveforms are unique to the gesture.
[…]
Right now, WiFinger imposes constraints on the user – rather like the gesture recognition on the Heart of Gold (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), it seems you have to “sit infuriatingly still” for the system to work.

Source: Text input from thin air: boffins give Wi-Fi the finger with AI

An open source, physically secure personal computer.

Source: ORWL – The First Open Source, Physically Secure Computer | Crowd Supply

Have you ever wondered if those miracle sprays that promise to protect the liner of your pickup truck from damage actually work? Here’s proof they do. The amateur scientists at YouTube’s How Ridiculous covered a watermelon in Line-X spray and dropped it off a 150-feet tall tower. Not only did the watermelon survive the fall, it actually bounced on impact. Whoa.

Source: Miraculous Spray-On Coating Protects a Watermelon From a 150-Foot Drop

DuoSkin is a fabrication process that enables anyone to create customized functional devices that can be attached directly on their skin. Using gold metal leaf, a material that is cheap, skin-friendly, and robust for everyday wear, we demonstrate three types of on-skin interfaces: sensing touch input, displaying output, and wireless communication.

Source: DuoSkin | MIT Media Lab

Hello! Stratux is a homebuilt ADS-B In receiver for pilots. It’s easy to assemble from inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware, and probably already works with your electronic flight bag (EFB) of choice. Even better, if you’re so inclined, the software is open-source and hackable so you can build the system that’s right for you.

Source: Stratux by cyoung

If you’re a photographer shooting with Eyefi’s older generation Wi-Fi memory cards, here’s something you should know: your card will soon become more or less useless.

Just days after announcing that it had sold its cloud services to Ricoh, Eyefi sent out an email to customers this week, informing them that older X1 and X2 cards — everything prior to the new Mobi line — now have an “End of Life” date of September 16th, 2016.

Source: Eyefi To Brick Its Older Wi-Fi Cards, And Photographers Aren’t Happy

So even hardware is suspect to the whims of the manufacturer. Having a kill switch on stuff you buy sucks.

Spend more time with your loved ones and hand over your laundry folding to FoldiMate, the robotic laundry folding machine. Reserve yours today!

Source: Automatic robotic clothes and laundry folding machine

Let’s hope it gets made! Waiting for 2017 to come along 🙂

IBM Quantum Experience represents the birth of quantum cloud computing, offering hands-on access to IBM’s experimental cloud-enabled quantum computing platform, and allowing users to run algorithms and experiments, work with quantum bits (qubits), and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing[…]
The IBM Quantum Experience is a virtual lab where you can design and run your own algorithms through the cloud on real quantum processors located in the IBM Quantum Lab at the Thomas J Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY.

Source: IBM Research Quantum Experience

Better-than-binary multi-level memory

Source: Magnetic memory boffins unveil six-state storage design

They arrange three magnetic ellipses in a very small space. They are calling it MRAM.