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sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: A pair of earthquakes that struck the remote California desert 1 year ago have raised the risk of 'the big one' hitting Southern California, according to a new study. The research finds that the 2019 Ridgecrest, California, quakes shifted underground stresses, making the San Andreas fault -- the state's longest and most dangerous fault -- three times more likely to rupture. U.S. Geological Survey estimates for the annual probability of an earthquake on this part of the San Andreas are about one-third of a percent -- equivalent to expecting a magnitude 7.8 every 300 years, on average. The new modeling triples that hazard to 1% per year -- or a big one every century. And if the Garlock actually does rupture, then the hazard really rises on the San Andreas, by a factor of 150: The probability of a big one rises to 50% in the following year. In principle, a Garlock earthquake could lead to rupture on the San Andreas in a matter of hours or days, much as the two Ridgecrest events came within a day or two. USGS regional scenarios anticipate 1,800 deaths and 50,000 injuries in the event of a major San Andreas earthquake. More than 3 million homes could be damaged, at a reconstruction cost of $289 billion. The study has been published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

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Cambridge Engineering alumnus Hal Evans has built a fully-functioning replica of a 1930s Polish cyclometer -- an electromechanical cryptologic device that was designed to assist in the decryption of German Enigma ciphertext. The replica currently resides in King's College, Cambridge. TechXplore reports: Work on the hardware-based replica began in 2018, as part of Hal's fourth year Master's project under the supervision of King's College Fellow and Senior Tutor Dr. Tim Flack. The aim was to investigate further into cryptologist Marian Rejewski's cyclometer -- an early forerunner to Cambridge University mathematician Alan Turing's machine, known as the Bombe, which was used to crack the German Enigma code during the Second World War. Hal said he chose to work on the cyclometer as it was the very first machine used to assist the decryption effort. To his knowledge, the replica is the first fully-functioning hardware-based electromechanical cyclometer to exist since the years preceding the Second World War. The original machines would have been destroyed in 1939 to prevent them from falling into the hands of German invaders. Rejewski's cyclometer exploited the German's procedure at the time of double encipherment of the Enigma message key, and semi-automated the process for calculating what were known as 'characteristics' for every possible Enigma rotor starting position. There were more than 100,000 of these rotor starting positions, and they each needed their characteristic to be calculated and catalogued in a card index system. The cyclometer therefore eliminated the arduous task of calculating these characteristics by hand. The machine consisted of, in effect, two interlinked Enigma systems side-by-side -- one offset by three positions relative to the other -- and 26 lamps and switches to cover the alphabet. On operation, a certain number of bulbs illuminated, indicating the lengths of the characteristics. These were recorded for every single possible rotor starting position to create an immense look-up catalogue. Once this was completed, obtaining the daily Enigma rotor starting settings to decode messages was a simple matter of intercepting enough messages and referencing the catalogue, taking only a matter of minutes.

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Grant Imahara, an electrical engineer and roboticist who hosted the popular science show MythBusters and Netflix's White Rabbit Project, has died suddenly following a brain aneurysm. He was 49. From The Hollywood Reporter: An electrical engineer and roboticist by training, he joined Discovery's MythBusters in its third season, replacing Scottie Chapman and was with the show until 2014 when he left with with co-hosts Kari Byron and Tory Belleci. The trio would reunite in 2016 for Netflix's White Rabbit Project which lasted for one season. On MythBusters, Imahara used his technical expertise to design and build robots for the show and also operated the computers and electronics needed to test myths. Born in Los Angeles, Imahara studied electrical engineering at the University of Southern California (though he briefly had doubts and wanted to become a screenwriter) before combining the two passions and landing a post-graduation gig at Lucasfilm-associated THX labs. In his nine years at Lucasfilm, he worked for the company's THX and Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) divisions. In his years at ILM he became chief model maker specializing in animatronics and worked on George Lucas' Star Wars prequels, as well as The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Galaxy Quest, XXX: State of the Union, Van Helsing, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. [...] Imahara also starred in several episodes of the fan-made web series Star Trek Continues. He played Hikaru Sulu, a lieutenant, helmsman and third officer on the USS Enterprise, in the show that was an unofficial continuation of Star Trek: The Original Series. "We are heartbroken to hear this sad news about Grant. He was an important part of our Discovery family and a really wonderful man. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family," a representative for Discovery said in a statement on Monday.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Researchers in Singapore have developed an apparatus that can be placed in a window to reduce incoming sound by 10 decibels. The system was created by a team of scientists, including Masaharu Nishimura, who came up with the basic concept, and Bhan Lam, a researcher at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Their results were published on Thursday in Scientific Reports. The prototype is not yet the most practical device in real world conditions, but it points the way toward the development of technologies that may help ease the strain of noisy city living. Borrowing from the same technological principles used in noise-canceling headphones, the team expanded the concept to fit an entire room by placing 24 small speakers in a window. The speakers emit sound waves that correspond to the incoming racket and neutralize it -- or, at least some of it. The system is based on the frequency of the sound waves and, for now, the optimal range is between 300 and 1,000 hertz. [...] The system uses a microphone outside the window to detect the repeating sound waves of the offending noise source, which is registered by a computer controller. That in turn deciphers the proper wave frequency needed to neutralize the sound, which is transmitted to the array of speakers on the inside of the window frame. The speakers then emit the proper "anti" waves, which cancel out the incoming waves, and there you have it: near blissful silence. Unfortunately, there are some limitations. The system works best from the types of steady noise sources found within the optimal frequency range and isn't great at neutralizing sporadic noises. Also, since human voices don't fit within most of that range, they won't be canceled out.

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Engineers from Kenoteq are working to reinvent the humble clay-fired brick, which has remained largely the same for thousands of years and causes significant environmental problems. Not only are the majority of brick kilns required to produce bricks heated by fossil fuels, but the bricks that are made must be transported to construction sites, generating more carbon emissions. CNN reports: [Gabriela Medero, a professor of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering at Scotland's Heriot-Watt University] joined forces with fellow engineer Sam Chapman and founded Kenoteq in 2009. The company's signature product is the K-Briq. Made from more than 90% construction waste, Medero says the K-Briq -- which does not need to be fired in a kiln -- produces less than a tenth of the carbon emissions of conventional bricks. With the company testing new machinery to start scaling up production, Medero hopes her bricks will help to build a more sustainable world. To make it, construction and demolition waste including bricks, gravel, sand and plasterboard is crushed and mixed with water and a binder. The bricks are then pressed in customized molds. Tinted with recycled pigments, they can be made in any color. [...] Kenoteq currently operates one workshop in Edinburgh, which can produce three million K-Briqs a year. Medero is looking at scaling up -- but it's hard to create a revolution in construction. Over the next 18 months, Medero plans to get K-Briq machinery on-site at recycling plants. This will increase production while reducing transport-related emissions, she says, because trucks can collect K-Briqs when they drop off construction waste. "We need to have ways of building sustainably, with affordable, good quality materials that will last."

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California has opened its own antitrust probe into Google, leaving just one state that has yet to do so. "In September, attorneys general from 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia announced an antitrust investigation into Google focused on the company's dominance of the advertising technology market," reports Politico. "Over the past 10 months, that investigation -- led by Texas -- has expanded into other aspects of the company's business, including its conduct in the search market." From the report: California -- which houses Google's headquarters in Mountain View -- was the most notable holdout in the multi-state group, and Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra has repeatedly declined to answer questions about why the state wasn't a participant. The California antitrust probe is a separate investigation from the multi-state effort, two of the individuals said. All of the individuals spoke on condition of anonymity to talk openly about a confidential probe. Alabama is now the only state that is not investigating the company. It was not immediately clear what aspect of Google's business California is targeting. Google has previously been in California's crosshairs over antitrust concerns. In the early 2010s, California was among five states that investigated Google alongside the Federal Trade Commission over allegations the tech giant biased its search results to favor its own products. The FTC opted against filing an antitrust suit and closed its probe in January 2013. California and the other states, which included Texas, New York, Oklahoma and Ohio, later closed their probes in 2014. California has its own antitrust laws, the Cartwright Act and the Unfair Competition Act, that are sometimes interpreted more broadly than the U.S. federal antitrust law. Unlike federal antitrust law, California's laws do allow government enforcers to seek restitution or civil penalties for violations.

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Amid intense scrutiny over TikTok as a potential national security risk in the U.S., WeChat, the essential tool for Chinese people's day-to-day life, is also taking heat from Washington. TechCrunch reports: White House trade advisor Peter Navarro told Fox Business on Sunday that "[TikTok] and WeChat are the biggest forms of censorship on the Chinese mainland, and so expect strong action on that." Navarro alleged that "all of the data that goes into those mobile apps that kids have so much fun with and seem so convenient, it goes right to servers in China, right to the Chinese military, the Chinese communist party, and the agencies which want to steal our intellectual property." It's unclear how the U.S. restriction will play out, if it will at all, though some WeChat users are already speculating workarounds to stay in touch with their family and friends back home. In the case that the Tencent-owned messenger is removed by Apple App Store or Google Play, U.S.-based users could switch to another regional store to download the app. If it were an IP address ban, they could potentially access the app through virtual private networks (VPNs), tools that are familiar to many in China to access online services blocked by Beijing's Great Firewall.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The multinational drinks company Diageo says it has created the world's first paper-based spirits bottle that is 100% plastic-free. The company said it was aiming to launch the bottle early next year with its Johnnie Walker whisky brand in one market before rolling it out worldwide. The bottle is made from sustainably sourced pulp, complies with international food and drink safety standards and is fully recyclable. The contents are protected by a liner, made of resin rather than plastic, which holds the liquid but disintegrates when finished. The cap will be made of aluminum. The report notes that a paper beer bottle was unveiled last year by Danish brewer Carlsberg.

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Self-driving startup Voyage built a physical "Telessist Pod" with software that allows a remote operator to give instructions to a self-driving car. Iwastheone shares a report from Ars Technica "For all of this to work safely, it had to basically be a car without wheels," Voyage CEO Oliver Cameron told me in a Thursday phone interview. "It had to have a real steering wheel, real pedals, real automotive-grade connectors, and real automotive-grade ECUs." Voyage's engineers built a "car without wheels" because they wanted to mirror the experience of driving a real car as closely as possible. "If you try to do it with a gaming steering wheel, you don't get the force feedback" you get with a real car, Cameron said. "It's impossible to drive reliably like that. It's so unsafe." Remote Voyage drivers sit in a metal cage the size of a golf cart. There's a steering wheel, gas pedal, and brake pedal where you'd expect them in a real car. A wraparound array of computer monitors shows the car's surroundings. An encrypted wireless data connection keeps the components in the Telessist pod synchronized with their counterparts in the real car. Voyage says the network latency is under 100 milliseconds -- short enough that the driver won't notice a significant lag. In case something goes wrong, the company bonded together five separate cellular connections, each with its own SIM card on a different wireless carrier, to achieve maximum redundancy and hence reliability," reports Ars. "If one of the five networks fails, software automatically switches over to the other four." There's a system called Remote Drive Assist that will take over if the car loses its wireless connection. Voyage even added an emergency braking system, which consists of a small, self-contained lidar unit in front of Voyage's cars. "If it detects an imminent collision, it has the power to activate the brakes and bring the vehicle to a stop," adds Ars. "This means that, even if the human driver -- or Voyage's main self-driving system, for that matter -- makes a mistake, the car is unlikely to run into anything."

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Ubisoft announced on Monday that it will give away Watch Dogs 2 for free after a giveaway glitch made it harder for fans to get copies than they initially intended. Uproxx reports: Sunday's Ubisoft Forward event was a chance for the video game company to show off what's in the pipeline this fall, highlighted by a first (official) look at Far Cry 6. The event also gave us a look at Watch Dogs Legion and its combat system, featuring gameplay where any NPC is playable. To celebrate the new release, Ubisoft had teased free copies of Watch Dogs 2 if fans tuned into the event and logged into their Ubisoft accounts to claim the game. But according to a number of fans online, they struggled to get logged in and had password troubles. On Monday, Ubisoft's support account updated fans to say the game will be available for fans -- whether they tuned in or not -- until July 15. They included a link to register and log in to snag the code, and hopefully not encounter any problems along the way. It's a nice gesture from a company hoping fans are ready for a lot more Watch Dogs this fall, and getting back into the ecosystem for free is as good a way as any to start.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: U.S. utilities are producing less greenhouse gases as they continue to shift away from coal. Carbon dioxide emissions from the 100 biggest U.S. electricity producers fell 8% last year, according to a report (PDF) Wednesday from the environmental group Ceres. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, two other key pollutants produced by burning coal, declined by 23% and 14%, respectively. The results reflect the increasing impact of the green transition as power producers shutter coal plants in favor of cheaper and cleaner natural gas and renewables. More than 9 gigawatts of coal capacity is expected to be permanently retired this year, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Utilities' carbon emissions have declined 28% since 2000 even as U.S. gross domestic product climbed, a sign that cutting pollution need not constrain economic development. The declines may be even larger this year as the coronavirus pandemic slows power consumption. Emissions will continue to come down in future years as power companies use more wind and solar, coupled with increasing installation of energy storage systems.

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Google today announced three new online certificate programs in data analytics, project management and user experience design. From a report: The certificates are created and taught by Google employees, do not require a college degree, can be completed in three to six months and are offered through the online learning platform Coursera. Google says it will consider all of its certificates as the equivalent of a four-year college degree for related roles at the company. "This is not revenue-generating for Google," says Google vice president, Lisa Gevelber, who leads Grow with Google and Google for Startups and serves as the company's Americas chief marketing officer. "There's a small cost from the Coursera platform itself -- the current pricing is $49 a month -- but we want to ensure that anyone who wants to have this opportunity, can have it." The tech giant has committed to funding 100,000 need-based scholarships for individuals enrolled in any of these career certificate programs and will be awarding over $10 million in grants to YWCA, NPower and JFF -- three nonprofits that partner with Google to provide workforce development to women, veterans and underrepresented Americans. Gevelber says Google chose the specific fields of data analytics, project management and user experience because they can lead to "high-growth, high-paying careers."

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Researchers at Zhejiang University and Microsoft claim they've developed an AI system -- DeepSinger -- that can generate singing voices in multiple languages by training on data from music websites. From a report: In a paper published on the preprint Arxiv.org, they describe the novel approach, which leverages a specially-designed component to capture the timbre of singers from noisy singing data. The work -- like OpenAI's music-generating Jukebox AI -- has obvious commercial implications. Music artists are often pulled in for pick-up sessions to address mistakes, changes, or additions after a recording finishes. AI-assisted voice synthesis could eliminate the need for these, saving time and money on the part of the singers' employers. But there's a darker side: It could also be used to create deepfakes that stand in for musicians, making it seem as though they sang lyrics they never did (or put them out of work). In what could be a sign of legal battles to come, Jay-Z's Roc Nation label recently filed copyright notices against videos that used AI to make him rap Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." As the researchers explain, singing voices have more complicated patterns and rhythms than normal speaking voices. Synthesizing them requires information to control the duration and the pitch, which makes the task challenging. Plus, there aren't many publicly available singing training data sets, and songs used in training must be manually analyzed at the lyrics and audio level.

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Fans of Microsoft's famous Flight Sim won't have long to wait until the latest incarnation arrives. From a report: This promises to be the most detailed and authentic version to date, with incredibly accurate landscapes that are ever-changing, coupled with highly detailed aircraft, covering everything from light planes to commercial jets. Microsoft Flight Simulator has been around since 1982 -- feeling old yet? -- and the new version will be available in three editions -- Standard ($59.99), Deluxe ($89.99) and Premium Deluxe ($119.99). The Deluxe edition comes with five extra planes and five extra international airports. The Premium Deluxe adds a further five planes and airports on top of that. Microsoft Flight Simulator launches on August 18, and you can pre-order on Windows 10 or pre-install with Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta) today.

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Sphere packing might seem like a topic only a mathematician could love. Who else could get excited about finding the most efficient way to arrange circles in the plane, or spheres in space? But right now, millions of people all over the world are thinking about this very problem. From a report: Determining how to safely reopen buildings and public spaces under social distancing is in part an exercise in geometry: If each person must keep six feet away from everyone else, then figuring out how many people can sit in a classroom or a dining room is a question about packing non-overlapping circles into floor plans. Of course there's a lot more to confronting COVID than just this geometry problem. But circle and sphere packing plays a part, just as it does in modeling crystal structures in chemistry and abstract message spaces in information theory. It's a simple-sounding problem that's occupied some of history's greatest mathematicians, and exciting research is still happening today, particularly in higher dimensions. For example, mathematicians recently proved the best way to pack spheres into 8- and 24-dimensional space -- a technique essential for optimizing the error-correcting codes used in cell phones or for communication with space probes. So let's take a look at some of the surprising complications that arise when we try to pack space with our simplest shape. If your job involves packing oranges in a box or safely seating students under social distancing, the size and shape of your container is a crucial component of the problem. But for most mathematicians, the theory of sphere packing is about filling all of space. In two dimensions, this means covering the plane with same-size circles that don't overlap.

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Type a query into the Google search bar on a smartphone and there's a good chance the results will be dominated by advertising. From a report: That stems from a decision in 2015 to test a fourth ad, rather than three, at the top of search results. Some employees opposed the move at the time, saying it could reduce the quality of Google's responses, according to people familiar with the deliberations. But the company brushed aside those concerns because it was under pressure to meet Wall Street growth expectations, one of the people said. By 2016, the extra marketing slot was a regular feature. It's one of the many ways the search leader has altered how it presents results since its early days. Another example is the pre-packaged information Google often displays in a box at the top of a page, rather than sending users to other websites. Phased in gradually over years, changes like these have gone largely unnoticed by legions of consumers who regularly turn to Google to call up information and hunt for bargains. The company says these changes support its mission to organize the world's information and make it useful and accessible to everyone. But to many web publishers and other businesses that have historically relied on the internet giant to send users to their sites, Google's subtle tweaks have siphoned off vital traffic and made it harder -- and costlier -- to reach customers online.

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Hammeh writes: Semiconductor maker Analog Devices said on Monday it would buy rival Maxim Integrated Products for about $21 billion in the largest U.S. deal this year, aiming to boost its market share in automotive and 5G chipmaking. The deal, which is also Analog's biggest, will create a chipmaking force with a combined enterprise value of about $68 billion that will compete with larger rivals including Texas Instruments). Analog Devices Chief Executive Vincent Roche told Reuters in an interview that the combined engineering teams would help the resulting company design more specialized, higher-margin chips for customers such as automakers. "If you're doing commodities, you're at the mercy of the of the heavy hammer of the procurement folks," Roche said. "But our game is about getting there first, getting out on the edge and making a real impact at the application level for our customers." The companies said the deal added Maxim's strength in automotive and data center markets to ADI's broad industrial, communications and digital healthcare segments.

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The Democratic and Republican national committees have warned their staffs about using the Chinese-owned app TikTok. From a report: The Democratic National Committee warned Democratic campaigns, committees and state parties Friday to take additional security precautions when using TikTok. In the email, the DNC security team wrote, "We continue to advise campaign staff to refrain from using TikTok on personal devices. If you are using TikTok for campaign work, we recommend using a separate phone and account." Republican National Committee national press secretary Mandi Merritt said Saturday the RNC had longstanding guidance on TikTok. "The RNC has advised employees and stakeholders to not download the TikTok app on their personal devices," she said, citing "security concerns." The DNC had suggested to campaigns in a memo in December not to use TikTok, citing concerns about the app's "Chinese ties and potentially sending data back to the Chinese government."

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Microsoft has been collaborating with Google to ensure that their tools interoperate and can help developers get their Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) into the Play Store. From a report: "We're glad to announce a new collaboration between Microsoft and Google for the benefit of the web developer community," Microsoft's Judah Gabriel Himango announced. "Microsoft's PWABuilder and Google's Bubblewrap are now working together to help developers publish PWAs in the Google Play Store." As Himango explains, PWABuilder is a Microsoft tool that helps developers build PWAs from existing websites and publish them in app stores, while Bubblewrap is a Google tool and library used to generate and sign Google Play Store packages from PWAs. After months of collaboration, the two firms have made some interesting progress towards integrating the tools. Now, PWABuilder utilizes Bubblewrap "under the hood," as Himango puts it, allowing developers to package PWAs for the Play Store with PWABuilder that support the new web shortcuts standard. (On Windows 10, web shortcuts appear as jump lists.)

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Apple announced Monday that it is allocating $400 million toward affordable housing and homeowner assistance programs in California this year, as part of the $2.5 billion commitment announced in November. From a report: The housing crisis has worsened in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, forcing states and cities to pause spending on affordable housing projects. Big Tech's wealth has been blamed by some for driving up housing prices in the San Francisco Bay Area and making it unaffordable for teachers, firefighters and other workers who support the region. Apple, along with Facebook, Google and Microsoft, committed a collective $5 billion to support affordable housing initiatives, but it ran into the reality that money alone can't solve the problem without changes to zoning and financing restrictions.

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