Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes IEEE Spectrum: Computers use a staggering amount of energy today. According to one recent estimate, data centers alone consume two percent of the world's electricity, a figure that's expected to climb to eight percent by the end of the decade. To buck that trend, though, perhaps the microprocessor, at the center of the computer universe, could be streamlined in entirely new ways.

One group of researchers in Japan have taken this idea to the limit, creating a superconducting microprocessor — one with zero electrical resistance. The new device, the first of its kind, is described in a study published last month in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits ...

The price of entry for the niobium-based microprocessor is of course the cryogenics and the energy cost for cooling the system down to superconducting temperatures. "But even when taking this cooling overhead into account," says Christopher Ayala, an Associate Professor at the Institute of Advanced Sciences at Yokohama National University, in Japan, who helped develop the new microprocessor, "The AQFP is still about 80 times more energy-efficient when compared to the state-of-the-art semiconductor electronic device, [such as] 7-nm FinFET, available today."

A semiconductor shortage is dragging on some of the world's biggest auto manufacturers, costing Daimler, Nissan Motor, Honda Motor and Ford Motor production of a range of cars. From a report: Mercedes-Benz maker Daimler joined its German peer Volkswagen AG in announcing it's affected by the industrywide supply bottleneck, without quantifying the impact. Honda said it will cut domestic output by about 4,000 cars this month at one of its factories in Japan, while Nissan is adjusting production of its Note hatchback model. Ford is idling a sport-utility vehicle factory in Kentucky next week, pulling forward previously planned downtime due to the chip shortage.

VW, the world's biggest carmaker, announced last month that it would need to adjust first-quarter manufacturing plans around the globe because of the shortage. The company said chipmakers reassigned some of their production capacity to consumer electronics and other sectors last year and were caught off guard by surprisingly resilient auto demand. The amount of VW car output lost could be in the low six-digit range, according to people familiar with the matter.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: One of the most remarkable "sixth" senses in the animal kingdom is magnetoreception -- the ability to detect magnetic fields -- but exactly how it works remains a mystery. Now, researchers in Japan may have found a crucial piece of the puzzle, making the first observations of live, unaltered cells responding to magnetic fields. Many animals are known to navigate by sensing the Earth's magnetic field, including birds, bats, eels, whales and, according to some studies, perhaps even humans. However, the exact mechanism at play in vertebrates isn't well understood. One hypothesis suggests it's the result of a symbiotic relationship between the animals and magnetic field-sensing bacteria. But the leading hypothesis involves chemical reactions induced in cells through what's called the radical pair mechanism.

Essentially, if certain molecules are excited by light, electrons can jump between them to their neighbors. That can create pairs of molecules with a single electron each, known as a radical pair. If the electrons in those molecules have matching spin states, they will undergo chemical reactions slowly, and if they're opposites the reactions occur faster. Since magnetic fields can influence electron spin states, they could induce chemical reactions that change an animals' behavior. In the living cells of animals with magnetoreception, proteins called cryptochromes are thought to be the molecules that undergo this radical pair mechanism. And now, researchers at the University of Tokyo have observed cryptochromes responding to magnetic fields for the first time. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Japan's NEC Corp. says face marks aren't an obstacle to its facial recognition tech. Mashable reports: The Japanese company claims its new facial recognition system can identify people with face masks in less than one second, with an accuracy rate higher than 99.9 percent. The system works by closely examining the parts of a person's face not covered by a mask, such as the eyes and surrounding areas. It does require the person to submit a photo in advance, though.

The idea is for the system to be used at security checkpoints in office buildings, airports, etc., so mask-wearers can go through without removing their masks. NEC is also testing the technology out for automated payments at an unmanned convenience store in the company's headquarters in Tokyo. The company has sold the system to Lufthansa and Swiss International Airlines.

Britain's competition watchdog has launched an investigation into the $40 billion takeover of the UK-based chip designer Arm by the US company Nvidia. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has called for interested parties to submit views on the contentious deal before the launch of a formal investigation later this year. Arm Holdings, which employs 6,500 staff including 3,000 in the UK, is a global leader in designing chips for smartphones, computers and tablets. California-based Nvidia, a graphics chip specialist, announced its plan to buy the British tech group from Japan's SoftBank in September. SoftBank had acquired Arm for $32 billion in 2016, when the Japanese company took advantage of the fall in value of the pound after the Brexit vote. Arm is based in Cambridge but has operations in a number of UK towns and cities, including Manchester, Belfast and Warwick. Its chief executive, Simon Segars, acknowledged at the time of the Nvidia deal that it could take up to 18 months to win approval from regulators around the world.

It might have taken more than 20 years, but a game intended for the original PlayStation has at last made its way into the world. Engadget reports: A group of Japanese developers worked on Magic Castle for eight months in the late '90s. They used Sony's Net Yaroze, a system with which hobbyists could make games for the console. The team sent the RPG to several publishers, but most didn't bite. Sony showed interest, but it wanted the developers to ditch their game and move to a different project. The team rejected the offer and later disbanded. And so the unfinished Magic Castle stayed on the shelf for over 20 years. Until now.

One of the developers, who goes by PIROWO, rediscovered the Magic Castle source code a while back. They decided to finish and release it, four console generations later. Magic Castle has some interesting tricks up its sleeve, as EuroGamer notes. It features dynamic music and you can customize the position of the user interface. There are four character classes to choose from and 20 floors with randomized elements to make your way through. You can download the game from the Internet Archive and play it with an emulator.

A few hours ago and after years of preparation, amendments to Japan's copyright law came into effect, aiming to criminalize those who download unlicensed manga, magazines, and academic texts from the Internet. From a report: While uploading pirated content has always been illegal, the new law is quite specific in that it criminalizes the downloading of unlicensed content. While that could take place in a simultaneous upload environment such as BitTorrent, it seems most likely that people will obtain content from websites instead. That presents some roadblocks to enforcement so we asked Ina how, from a technical perspective, will the authorities track, obtain evidence, and prosecute people who simply download content (comics, movies, music etc) to their machines but don't distribute? "The authorities shall use digital forensic technologies to track suspects' activities and collect evidence. The details of such technologies have not been publicly available," Masaharu Ina from Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA explained. "There are certain special units specialized in cyber crimes in each prefecture. For example, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has its own Cyber Crime Control Unit. But the police do not investigate unless the person commits the crime repeatedly, intentionally and maliciously, i.e. innocent light downloaders shall not be prosecuted."

Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will soon complete in Austria the world's largest steel plant capable of attaining net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. Mitsubishi Heavy, through a British unit, is constructing the pilot plant at a complex of Austrian steelmaker Voestalpine. Trial operation is slated to begin in 2021. From a report: The plant will use hydrogen instead of coal in the reduction process for iron ore. The next-generation equipment will produce 250,000 tons of steel product a year. The global steel industry generated about 2 billion tons of CO2 in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency -- double the volume in 2000. The steel sector's share among all industries grew 5 percentage points to 25%. Iron ore reduction accounts for much of the CO2 emissions in steelmaking. Japanese steelmakers including Nippon Steel are developing hydrogen-consuming reduction processes based on the conventional blast furnace design. Mitsubishi Heavy's plant adopts a process called direct reduced iron, or DRI. New blast furnaces require trillions of yen (1 trillion yen equals $9.6 billion) in investment. Although DRI equipment produces less steel, the investment is estimated at less than half of blast furnaces. For DRI to attain the same level of cost-competitiveness as blast furnaces, low-cost hydrogen will be key. Market costs for hydrogen now stand at around 100 yen per normal cu. meter, estimates the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

Joe2020 shares a report: A Japanese company and Kyoto University have joined forces to develop what they hope will be the world's first satellites made out of wood by 2023. Sumitomo Forestry said it has started research on tree growth and the use of wood materials in space. The partnership will begin experimenting with different types of wood in extreme environments on Earth. Space junk is becoming an increasing problem as more satellites are launched into the atmosphere. Wooden satellites would burn up without releasing harmful substances into the atmosphere or raining debris on the ground when they plunge back to Earth. "We are very concerned with the fact that all the satellites which re-enter the Earth's atmosphere burn and create tiny alumina particles which will float in the upper atmosphere for many years," Takao Doi, a professor at Kyoto University and Japanese astronaut, told the BBC. "Eventually it will affect the environment of the Earth. The next stage will be developing the engineering model of the satellite, then we will manufacture the flight model."

Mashable reports: The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency showed off a collection of samples from the asteroid Ryugu on Thursday following the return of the Hayabusa2 probe.

The black, gravelly samples from Ryugu contain a whole bunch of small chips collected from the asteroid's subsurface...

Normally, space rocks like these are collected after they enter Earth's atmosphere at surface-scorching speeds. These samples from Ryugu are the first ever that can be examined without being damaged during entry, which is key to getting a clear look at and better understanding these celestial rocks, according to a report from NPR.

Japan said it planned to stop the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by the mid-2030s, bucking criticism by Toyota's chief that a hasty shift to electric vehicles could cripple the car industry. From a report: The plan released Friday followed similar moves by the state of California and major European nations, but it has faced resistance from car executives in a country that still makes millions of cars annually running solely on gasoline engines. Japan would still permit the sale of hybrid gas-electric cars after 2035 under the plan. Many models from Japan's top car makers -- Toyota, Honda Motor and Nissan Motor -- come in both traditional and hybrid versions.

Earlier this month, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said that if Japan was too hasty in banning gasoline-powered cars and moving to electric vehicles, "the current business model of the car industry is going to collapse." He was speaking on behalf of Japanese car makers in his role as head of a local industry association. Mr. Toyoda said the electricity grid couldn't handle extra summer demand and observed that most of Japan's electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Government officials said car makers needed to revise their business models. Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga pointed to a different portion of Mr. Toyoda's comments in which the Toyota chief said he backed the government's goal of making Japan carbon-neutral by 2050. Reducing carbon emissions "should be tackled as a strategy for growth, not as a limitation on growth," Mr. Suga said.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Japanese website Asahi reports that Nikon is ending the production of cameras in Japan and moving all production to Thailand. This is simply Nikon's attempt to cut costs as much as it gets. Don't think this is enough to make them stay in the business.

"On Friday, Nintendo and Universal Studios Japan took the veil off a years-in-the-making project: the very first Nintendo-themed theme park," reports Ars Technica (in an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader mprindle): And who better to introduce the world to this life-sized walk through of all things Mario than the character's creator himself, longtime Nintendo developer and designer Shigeru Miyamoto...

Many of the park's decorations and objects can be interacted with by park visitors who wear a special wristband, dubbed the Power-Up Band, which includes an Amiibo-like NFC chip. Press its sensor near park objects like a Super Mario coin block, and a new virtual item will appear in a synced Super Nintendo World app on your smartphone. Exactly how these virtual items will affect your visit to Super Nintendo World remains unclear, but Miyamoto-san hinted to surprising attractions and hidden interactable panels for park visitors to discover in person. (Additionally, those Power-Up Bands will double as Amiibo for compatible hardware, like Nintendo Switch.)

Only one "ride" received a showcase in the video, albeit a brief one: a Mario Kart race against Bowser. It's hosted inside a replica of Bowser's castle, and visitors will sit in one of a series of Mario-styled go-karts that appear to be linked on a rollercoaster-like track, as opposed to freely controllable. Exactly what visitors will see on that ride remains unclear, but previous news about the ride's augmented reality (AR) elements was reinforced with the first official look at the park's AR glasses, which come attached to a Super Mario hat.
The park opens in Japan on February 4, 2021, according to Ars, followed by later launches at Universal Studios in in Singapore, and at its U.S. locations in Orlando, Florida and Los Angeles.

Makers of cars and electronic devices from TVs to smartphones are sounding alarm bells about a global shortage of chips, which is causing manufacturing delays as consumer demand bounces back from the coronavirus crisis. From a report: The problem has several causes, industry executives and analysts say, including bulk-buying by U.S. sanctions-hit Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, a fire at a chip plant in Japan, coronavirus lockdowns in Southeast Asia, and a strike in France. More fundamentally, however, there has been under-investment in 8-inch chip manufacturing plants owned mostly by Asian firms, which means they have struggled to ramp up production as demand for 5G phones, laptops and cars picked up faster than expected. "For the whole electronics industry, we've been experiencing a shortage of components," said Donny Zhang, CEO of Shenzhen-based sourcing company Sand and Wave, who said he faced delays in obtaining a microcontroller unit that was key to a smart headphone product he was working on. "We were originally planning to complete production in one month, but now it looks like we'll need to do it in two." A source at a Japanese electronics component supplier said it was seeing shortages of WiFi and Bluetooth chips and was expecting delays of more than 10 weeks.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Electric-car companies are suddenly worth half of the total market capitalization of the world's 10 most valuable automakers. That's because money managers sized up the convergence of government policies and people's preferences combating climate change and made alternative energy their biggest bet. Much was achieved by Tesla Inc., the Palo Alto maker of the S, X, Y and 3 model vehicles, giving it a market capitalization of $539 billion, or more than Japan's Toyota Motor Corp., Germany's Volkswagen AG and Detroit's General Motors Co. combined. Tesla was barely 26% of Toyota's value at this point last year. None of the industry's Top 10 exclusively manufactured EVs in 2015; this year the list included Shanghai-based Nio Inc. and Guangzhou-based XPeng Inc., EV upstarts in the world's largest market.

Tesla and its Chinese competitors accounted for only 8% of the value of the Top 10 in 2019 -- still a huge leap from zero percent in 2016. The three EV makers reported annual sales of $30.5 billion, or about 3% of total sales for the 10 largest companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Commentators and short sellers, who profit when a security's price declines, predict that the companies' shares will plummet before long because the companies' values are far out of proportion to their more modest profits and revenues. Since its initial public offering in June 2010, Tesla revenue increased 241 times as revenue for the rest of the industry rose 19%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Tesla shares appreciated 170 times when the comparable figure was three times for global peers. None of which persuades numerous Tesla detractors, who insist the company will fail as soon as the legacy automakers determine that EVs are profitable. That moment arrives this month when Tesla joins the S&P 500 as its record-breaking largest new member.

In China, where EV incentives are part of the government's goal to become carbon neutral by 2060, Nio's annual revenues have tripled since its September 2018 IPO. Nio shares surged 665% during the same period as global peers were gaining 47%, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. XPeng's 2020 third-quarter revenue is 4.4 times the amount during the same period a year ago. After the company's August IPO, the shares rose 269% when global peers gained 29%. These unprecedented valuations come at a point when the fossil fuel industry is reporting record losses, including Exxon Mobil Corp.'s $20 billion write-down this month. The market for zero-emission electric vehicles, meanwhile, is poised to become explosive, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2019, 2.1 million cars, or 2.5% of the cars sold worldwide were electric. By 2030, 26 million EVs will be sold, or 28% of total sales worldwide, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. By 2040, 54 million EVs will be sold, or 58% of the global market, the analysts predict.

Long-time Slashdot reader reminds us that in 1999 scientists discovered the asteroid Ryugu flying 300 million kilometres (or 186,411,357 miles) from earth. In 2014, Japan launched a probe to collect samples from it.

Today those samples returned to earth.

The International Business Times shares pictures and report: In a streak of light across the night sky, samples collected from a distant asteroid arrived on Earth after being dropped off by Japanese space probe Hayabusa-2. Scientists hope the precious samples, which are expected to amount to no more than 1 gram of material, could help shed light on the origin of life and the formation of the universe. [That's 0.00220462262185 pounds.]

The capsule carrying samples entered the atmosphere just before 2:30 am Japan time (1730 GMT Saturday), creating a shooting-star-like fireball as it entered Earth's atmosphere. "Six years and it has finally come back to Earth," an official narrating a live broadcast of the arrival said, as images showed officials from Japan's space agency JAXA cheering and pumping their fists in excitement... The capsule was recovered in the southern Australian desert, and will now be processed before being sent to Japan...

The probe collected both surface dust and pristine material from below the surface that was stirred up by firing an "impactor" into the asteroid. The material collected from the asteroid is believed to be unchanged since the time the universe was formed...

Scientists are especially keen to discover whether the samples contain organic matter, which could have helped seed life on Earth.

"Earth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy," reports Phys.org: But don't worry, this doesn't mean that our planet is plunging towards the black hole. Instead the changes are results of a better model of the Milky Way Galaxy based on new observation data, including a catalog of objects observed over the course of more than 15 years by the Japanese radio astronomy project VERA.
CNET explains: Over the last 15 years, a Japanese radio astronomy project, VERA, has been gathering data. Using a technique called interferometry, VERA gathered data from telescopes across Japan and combined them with data from other existing projects to create what is essentially the most accurate map of the Milky Way yet.

By pinpointing the location and velocity of around 99 specific points in our galaxy, VERA has concluded that the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A, at the center of our galaxy, is actually 25,800 light-years from Earth — almost 2,000 light-years closer than what we previously believed.

In addition, the new model calculates Earth is moving faster than we believed. Older models clocked Earth's speed at 220 kilometers (136 miles) per second, orbiting around the galaxy's centre. VERA's new model has us moving at 227 kilometers (141 miles) per second.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Satoshi didn't leave much behind when he decided to leave the scene for good back in April, 2011. But, he did leave enough for us to conduct a thorough research into his whereabouts when he was working on Bitcoin. To conduct this research, we gathered data from the following:
Satoshi's Bitcointalk account (539 available posts)
His 34 emails on the cryptography and Bitcoin mailing lists
His 169 commits on SourceForge
The metadata from Bitcoin whitepaper versions from 2008 (PDF) and 2009 (PDF)
The Genesis block
Various Wayback Machine archives

The data-driven part of the research focuses on timestamps from Satoshi's Bitcointalk posts, SourceForge commits, and emails, which represent a total of 742 activity instances from 206 days (not consecutive). The timestamp data starts from October 31, 2008, when he first announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, and ends on December 13, 2010, when he sent his last email that is known to be UTC timestamped. Using that data we compiled scatter charts in different suspect time zones to see when he was active and when he was not. We then used other data we gathered to further confirm the most likely location he called home. Common suspect locations are the UK (GMT), US Eastern (EST), US Pacific (PST), Japan (JST), and Australia (AEST). The last two were easy to debunk, but the first three prospects needed further examination.

More than 30 major Japanese firms will begin experiments next year towards issuing a common, private digital currency to promote digitalisation in one of the world's most cash-loving countries, the group's organising body said on Thursday. From a report: The move follows the Bank of Japan's recently announced plan to experiment with issuing a digital yen, underscoring a growing awareness of the need for Japan to catch up to rapid global advances in financial technology. The group, consisting of Japan's three biggest banks as well as brokerages, telecommunication firms, utilities and retailers, will conduct experiments for issuing a digital currency that will use a common settlement platform. "Japan has many digital platforms, none of which are big enough to beat cash payments," Hiromi Yamaoka, a former BOJ executive who chairs the group, told an online briefing. "We don't want to create another silo-type platform. What we want to do is to create a framework that can make various platforms mutually compatible," Yamaoka said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Researchers have uncovered a massive hacking campaign that's using sophisticated tools and techniques to compromise the networks of companies around the world. The hackers, most likely from a well-known group that's funded by the Chinese government, are outfitted with both off-the-shelf and custom-made tools. One such tool exploits Zerologon, the name given to a Windows server vulnerability, patched in August, that can give attackers instant administrator privileges on vulnerable systems. Symantec uses the code name Cicada for the group, which is widely believed to be funded by the Chinese government and also carries the monikers of APT10, Stone Panda, and Cloud Hopper from other research organizations. The group has been active in espionage-style hacking since at least 2009 and almost exclusively targets companies linked to Japan. While the companies targeted in the recent campaign are located in the United States and other countries, all of them have links to Japan or Japanese companies.

The attacks make extensive use of DLL side-loading, a technique that occurs when attackers replace a legitimate Windows dynamic-link library file with a malicious one. Attackers use DLL side-loading to inject malware into legitimate processes so they can keep the hack from being detected by security software. The campaign also makes use of a tool that's capable of exploiting Zerologon. Exploits work by sending a string of zeros in a series of messages that use the Netlogon protocol, which Windows servers use to let users log into networks. People with no authentication can use Zerologon to access an organization's crown jewels -- the Active Directory domain controllers that act as an all-powerful gatekeeper for all machines connected to a network. Microsoft patched the critical privilege-escalation vulnerability in August, but since then attackers have been using it to compromise organizations that have yet to install the update. Both the FBI and Department of Homeland Security have urged that systems be patched immediately. Among the machines compromised during attacks discovered by Symantec were domain controllers and file servers. Company researchers also uncovered evidence of files being exfiltrated from some of the compromised machines.