SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Sweden: man goes on trial for 2004 murder after DNA matched to genealogy site:

A 37-year-old Swedish man has gone on trial for double murder after two killings that went unsolved for more than 15 years until police matched his DNA on a popular genealogy website.

Daniel Nyqvist, who confessed to the crime shortly after his arrest last June, has been charged with the 2004 murder of a 56-year-old woman and an eight-year-old boy.

The two victims – who were unrelated – were stabbed in a random act in the quiet southern Swedish town of Linkoping [sic Linköping].

The crime shocked the nation, with investigators unable to come up with either a perpetrator or a motive, despite finding the suspect’s DNA at the scene, the weapon that was used, a bloody cap and witness descriptions of a young man with blond hair.

Police even called upon the FBI for help, but to no avail. Over the years, the case file grew to become the second biggest in Sweden’s history, after that of the 1986 murder of former prime minister Olof Palme.

The case was finally cracked when new legislation in January 2019 allowed police to search for matches to suspects’ DNA on commercial genealogy websites, which are popular among Swedes seeking long-lost relatives.

[...] “We received a match almost immediately. And several months later, the suspect could be arrested. His DNA was taken and matched 100%,” police said in a statement the day after his arrest.

How much might other repositories uncover, and are any fundamental freedoms violated by so trawling?

Original Submission

upstart brings us the IRC submission:

Dismay as huge chunk of Greenland's ice cap breaks off:

An enormous chunk of Greenland's ice cap has broken off in the far northeastern Arctic, a development that scientists say is evidence of rapid climate change.

The glacier section that broke off is 110 square kilometers (42.3 square miles). It came off of the fjord called Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, which is roughly 80 kilometers (50 miles) long and 20 kilometers (12 miles) wide, the National Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland said Monday.

[...] Annual end-of-melt-season changes for the Arctic's largest ice shelf in Northeast Greenland are measured by optical satellite imagery, the survey known as GEUS said. It shows that the area's ice losses for the past two years each exceeded 50 square kilometers (19 square miles).

[...] "What is thought-provoking is that if we ... had seen this meltdown 30 years ago, we would have called it extreme. So in recent years, we have become accustomed to a high meltdown."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Traders set to don virtual reality headsets in their home offices

Spare bedrooms and living rooms could soon become part of vibrant trading floors as one of the world's biggest investment banks considers providing staff with augmented reality headsets.

UBS has experimented with issuing its London-based traders with Microsoft HoloLenses, which would allow staff to recreate the experience of working in a packed trading floor without leaving their homes.

Banks have been desperate to bring workers back to the office, especially for regulatory-sensitive roles such as trading, but surges in coronavirus infection rates have meant many staff are wary about using public transport.

"If people really can't come to the office, can we create a virtual presence?" Beatriz Martin, UBS UK chief executive, told the Financial Times. "We are thinking about experimenting with the tools that are out there."

UBS has set up a working group focused on "reimagining the trading floor," which has also considered setting up screens on traders' desks with camera feeds from their co-workers to encourage collaboration.

The only reality is virtual. If you're not jacked in, you're not alive.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Leak reveals $2tn of possibly corrupt US financial activity

Thousands of documents detailing $2 trillion (£1.55tn) of potentially corrupt transactions that were washed through the US financial system have been leaked to an international group of investigative journalists.

The leak focuses on more than 2,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) filed with the US government's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

Banks and other financial institutions file SARs when they believe a client is using their services for potential criminal activity.

However, the filing of an SAR does not require the bank to cease doing business with the client in question.

The documents were provided to BuzzFeed News, which shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

The documents are said to suggest major banks provided financial services to high-risk individuals from around the world, in some cases even after they had been placed under sanctions by the US government.

See also: FinCEN Files: All you need to know about the documents leak
FinCEN Files: Tory donor Lubov Chernukhin linked to $8m Putin ally funding

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Fnord666:

Cop arrests apparently sleeping Tesla driver going 93mph:

Police in Alberta, Canada, arrested a driver in July who was going 140km/h (87mph) in a Tesla Model S. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced the arrest yesterday.

The officer reported seeing "both front seats completely reclined and both occupants appearing to be asleep." The car "appeared to be self-driving," the RCMP says. When the officer turned on his emergency lights, the vehicle sped up to 150km/h (93mph).

Eventually, the RCMP pulled over the 20-year-old driver and charged him with speeding. They later added a dangerous driving charge.

Original Submission

hubie writes:

For several decades there have been various incarnations of the idea of using lasers to zap flying insects, particularly mosquitoes. One of the systems in active development is the Photonic Fence from Intellectual Ventures Laboratory. Researchers from the laboratory recently published their findings on determining the optimal dosage to kill mosquitoes using the least amount of energy. One of the criticisms of their system has been that the areas in greatest need for mosquito eradication provide unreliable power, so their system would most likely need to operate by providing its own power.

Their research found that the optimal pulse duration for the lasers they are considering in their design is 25 ms. A significant difference between this research and their previous work is that this study was conducted on in-flight mosquitoes as opposed to previous work that used anesthetized specimens, which demonstrated their vision-based track and targeting system. An added bonus is the four slow-motion videos provided in the Supplemental Information section showing mosquitoes being zapped.

Keller, M.D., Norton, B.J., Farrar, D.J. et al. Optical tracking and laser-induced mortality of insects during flight, Sci Rep 10, 14795 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71824-y

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Accepted to appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Earth's Future, a group of researchers from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boeing, and the University of Illinois looked at the potential effects that a future commercial Hypersonic Transport (HST) fleet would have on the ozone layer. Given the designs under consideration and that these vehicles would fly above the ozone layer, they considered the effects of water vapor and nitrogen compounds on the ozone layer as a function of the altitude they are released.

Plain Language Summary
Commercial hypersonic aircraft, if developed in the future, will be flying at Mach 5 to 8 in the middle to upper stratosphere (30 to 40 km altitude) to carry passengers in a couple of hours from London to New York or from Los Angeles to Tokyo. Depending on the adopted technology and fleet size, the powerful engines of such airplanes may release substantial amounts of water and nitrogen oxides in the stratosphere, which could potentially damage the protecting ozone layer and hence increase the level of biologically damaging ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth surface. The paper uses an advanced global atmospheric model to assess the impact of a potential fleet of hypersonic aircraft.

One of the goals of the paper is that it can be used as a guide for engine design optimization and for planning of future flight paths. From the paper's conclusions:

HudsonLunatic writes:

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season continues to shatter records with Tropical Storm Beta churning in the Gulf of Mexico. When the normal list of names is exhausted, the Greek alphabet is used for storm names. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season also went into the Greek alphabet and Beta became a major hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph at the storm's peak intensity. Hurricane Beta (2005) didn't form until October 26, 2005 making the 2020 season over a month ahead of the pace of the record breaking 2005 season. This raises the conundrum of whether to retire letters of the Greek alphabet if a storm is particularly damaging. It appears the name would not be fully retired but a storm could be retired with a name like "Beta 2020" with the Greek letter remaining in use for future seasons. The extremely active hurricane season can probably be attributed significantly to climate change.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Lord of the Rings special effects company Weta Digital launches inquiry into toxic workplace claims:

Weta Digital, the special effects company behind the orcs, dragons and battle scenes of the Oscar-winning Lord of the Rings trilogy, has launched an independent investigation into allegations of a toxic work culture including sexism, bullying and pornography being shared on its intranet.

The investigation was ordered by the company's majority owners, who include the director Peter Jackson, his wife, Fran Welsh, and screenwriter Phillipa Boyens. It followed a months-long investigation by local television station TVNZ that found complaints had been ignored by senior management at Weta Digital, and long-standing issues raised by staff had been covered up.

"The world's most beautiful toxic waste dump," is how one former employee described the award-winning company.

Allegations from former staffers include sexism, bullying, and harassment, as well as "pornographic mailing lists'", hosted on Weta Digital's intranet, in addition to staff openly viewing pornography in the studio.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Court blocks Trump's WeChat ban from taking effect today:

"The plaintiffs have shown serious questions going to the merits of their First Amendment Claim," US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler wrote in her ruling (PDF) early this morning.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by a group of WeChat users inside the US. The group, organized as the US WeChat Users Alliance, argued in their complaint that the ban violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. The group also argues that the law cited in the executive order banning WeChat does not in fact give President Donald Trump the authority claimed in the order.

The Alliance established "that there are no viable substitute platforms or apps for the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-American community," Beeler added. Their evidence shows that "WeChat is effectively the only means of communication for many in the community, not only because China bans other apps, but also because Chinese speakers with limited English proficiency have no options other than WeChat."

[...] the Department of Commerce announced late last night that it would delay the enforcement on TikTok for at least a week following Trump's personal approval of a deal between TikTok and Oracle.

Also at CNBC, Reuters, and TheVerge.

Previously:
US Will Ban WeChat and TikTok Downloads on Sunday

Original Submission

Booga1 writes:

Kotaku reports disgruntled streamers are complaining about Twitch adding ads to the middle of live streamed videos.

In an ideal world, ads would be kept to a minimum, allowed only on the backs of magazines people keep in their bathrooms, which nobody actually reads. But even in this fallen world, there's a point at which ad proliferation becomes ridiculous. For Twitch streamers, Twitch's new ad experiment just crossed that line.

Yesterday [Sept. 15] afternoon, Twitch announced that it's "testing" new mid-stream ads that streamers have no direct control over.

"Beginning in September, as part of an ad experiment, some viewers may begin to notice that they are receiving ads during streams that others in a channel aren't receiving," the company wrote on its website. "Like pre-rolls, these are ads triggered by Twitch, not by the creator."

Crucially, these ads utilize Twitch's "picture-by-picture" functionality, which basically means that the stream you're watching pops out into a smaller window while the ad rolls in the main window. However, ads will still steal the show from some viewers, with streamers none the wiser as to who can hear what they're saying (picture-by-picture mutes streams) and, therefore, understand what's happening on stream while ads are playing.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Exclusive: AT&T considers cellphone plans subsidized by ads:

(Reuters) - AT&T Inc T.N is considering offering wireless phone plans partially subsidized by advertising as soon as a year from now, Chief Executive John Stankey said in an interview on Tuesday.

[...] The consideration, which has not been previously disclosed, underscores AT&T's commitment to the advertising business as the U.S. phone carrier reviews its portfolio to identify assets to sell in order to reduce its debt load. AT&T is considering selling its advertising-technology unit Xandr, sources familiar with the matter have told Reuters.

"I believe there's a segment of our customer base where given a choice, they would take some load of advertising for a $5 or $10 reduction in their mobile bill," Stankey said.

Various companies including Amazon.com Inc AMZN.O, Virgin Mobile USA and Sprint's Boost Mobile have tested advertising supported phone services since the early 2000s but they have not caught on. AT&T is hoping that better advertising targeting could revive the idea.

The planned launch of an ad-supported version of AT&T's video-streaming service HBO Max next year will serve as a "foundational element" that will provide new advertising inventory, and would be key to new phone plans supported by ads, Stankey said without offering details.

[...] AT&T engineers are creating "unified customer identifiers," Stankey said. Such technology would allow marketers to identify users across multiple devices and serve them relevant advertising.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

YouTube Rippers 'Flvto' and '2Conv' Will Take Legal Battle to US Supreme Court * TorrentFreak:

In 2018, a group of prominent record labels sued two very popular YouTube rippers, FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com.

The labels, including Universal, Warner Bros, and Sony, accused the sites of copyright infringement and hoped to quickly shut them down.

That didn't go as expected. The owner of the sites, a Russian man named Tofig Kurbanov, lawyered up and fought back.

[...] A Virginia federal court ruled that the music companies lacked personal jurisdiction. The sites were operated from abroad and didn't 'purposefully' target or interact with US users, it concluded.

[...] The music companies disagreed and appealed the matter at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which sent the case back to the district court a few months ago.

The appeals court found that there are more than sufficient facts to conclude that Kurbanov purposefully conducted business in the US, specifically, the state of Virginia. Kurbanov and his legal team disagreed but their request for a rehearing was denied.

Faced with this decision, which could potentially affect many other websites operated outside the United States, the owner of FLVTO.biz and 2conv.com has decided to petition the Supreme Court to take on the case.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

David Rosenthal discusses the last 25 years of digital preservation efforts in regards to academic journals. It's a long-standing problem and discontinued journals continue to disappear from the Internet. Paper, microfilm, and microfiche are slow to degrade and are decentralized and distributed. Digital media are quick to disappear and the digital publications are usually only in a single physical place leading to single point of failure. It takes continuous, unbroken effort and money to keep digital publications accessible even if only one person or institution wishes to retain acccess. He goes into the last few decades of academic publishing and how we got here and then brings up 4 points abuot preservation, especially in regards to Open Access publishing.

Lesson 1: libraries won't pay enough to preserve even subscription content, let alone open-access content.

[...] Lesson 2: No-one, not even librarians, knows where most of the at-risk open-access journals are.

[...] Lesson 3: The production preservation pipeline must be completely automated.

[...] Lesson 4: Don't make the best be the enemy of the good. I.e. get as much as possible with the available funds, don't expect to get everything.

He posits that focus should be on the preservation of the individual articles, not the journals as units.

Previously:
(2020) Internet Archive Files Answer and Affirmative Defenses to Publisher Copyright Infringement Lawsuit
(2018) Vint Cerf: Internet is Losing its Memory
(2014) The Importance of Information Preservation

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Homemade and small scale chocolate making has followed an arc similar to the beer industry where a "golden age" declines through consolidation to industrial dominance from which an "artisan" resurgence grows. In the early 20th century there were a relatively large number of chocolate makers where most of them were small-scale producers. As the century progressed, a number of factors drove the industry to consolidate where essentially all the small-scale makers were bought, or they went out of business. The global industry today is dominated by the "big five": Hershey's^®, Mars^®, Ferrero Rocher^®, Cadbury^®, and Nestlé^®. However, over the last 15 or so years, a number of small but dedicated "bean to bar" chocolate makers have been springing up.