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AnonTechie writes:

Issac Asimov's Harry Seldon used "psycho-history" to predict the future. Tom Cruise used "precogs" in Minority Report. And now a pro-Putin think tank is trying to divine dissident activity by mining social media.

The Center for Research in Legitimacy and Political Protest claims to have developed software that will search Russian social media posts for signs of plans by political opposition to the government to stage unapproved protests or meetings. Described by an Izvestia report [in Russian] as "a system to prevent mass disorder," the software searches through social media posts once every five minutes to catch hints of "unauthorized actions" and potentially alert law enforcement to prevent them.

Public protests, rallies, marches, and meetings staged without government approval are outlawed in Russia—individuals can be fined up to about $600 (30,000 rubles) for participating in such events or sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

The software, which went live on May 18, is named "Laplace's demon" after the theoretical all-seeing intellect that could calculate the future of the universe based on the position and state of all matter. According to the Center's director, Yevgeny Venediktov, the software specifically monitors "politically oriented groups of social protest" at a national level, as well as local discussion platforms for specific geographic areas. "Particular attention will be paid to the number of likes and reposts in extremist groups." Groups and user pages associated with "extremists" are tagged by volunteers, aggregated into a central database, and analyzed and filtered by sociologists and political scientists.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/pre-thoughtcrime-russian-think-tank-app-catches-protestors-before-they-protest/

takyon writes:

Cosmetics manufacturer L'Oréal is teaming up with bioengineering start-up Organovo to begin 3D-printing human skin. L'Oréal already grows human skin samples:

L'Oréal currently grows skin samples from tissues donated by plastic surgery patients. It produces more than 100,000, 0.5 sq cm skin samples per year and grows nine varieties across all ages and ethnicities.

Its statement explaining the advantage of printing skin, offered little detail: "Our partnership will not only bring about new advanced in vitro methods for evaluating product safety and performance, but the potential for where this new field of technology and research can take us is boundless."

Organovo has previously offered 3D-printed liver tissue for researchers and pharmaceutical companies:

"It was unclear how liver-like the liver structures were," said Alan Faulkner-Jones, a bioengineering research scientist at Heriot Watt university. Printing skin could be a different proposition, he thinks. "Skin is quite easy to print because it is a layered structure," he told the BBC. "The advantages for the cosmetics industry would be that it doesn't have to test products on animals and will get a better response from human skin."

But printed skin has more value in a medical scenario, he thinks. "It would be a great thing to have stores of spare skins for burn victims."

"gewg_" writes:

The Center for American Progress reports

During the 55-year, United States-led trade embargo, the Cuban government used what little resources it had to spur innovation in preventative medicine. Now, with the newly normalized relationship between the U.S. and the small Caribbean nation, American researchers want to seize an opportunity to expand access to Cuba's medical investments.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) recently visited Havana to broker a deal between between cancer researchers in his state and Cuban officials, who have created a potentially promising therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer that is headed to the United States for clinical trials.

The Cuban Ministry of Health made the vaccine, named CimaVax, available to the public in 2011 after researchers at Cuba's Center for Molecular Immunology tweaked the formula for 25 years. At a dollar per shot, the government has been able to protect Cubans against what has become the fourth-leading cause of death in the country by attacking proteins that cause cancerous tumors to grow.

CimaVax slows the growth of cancerous cells by stimulating the body's immune response and spurring the creation of antibodies that stunt the development of tumors. While the vaccine doesn't totally cure the lung cancer, it extends life expectancy by four to six months and reduces symptoms like coughing and breathlessness, as seen in clinical trials conducted in 2008.

[...]Japan and some European countries have launched trial studies of their own to explore Cimavax's potential.

[...]Since the launch of Rural Medical Service in the 1960s and the subsequent revitalization of health care networks for poor Cubans, the focus on prevention, rather than treatment, has helped the island nation keep its health care costs in check. Annual health care costs average about $300 per person--more than 20 times less than that of American patients.

TechDirt notes

Cuban scientists have come up with their own vaccines for meningitis B and hepatitis B, and monoclonal antibodies for kidney transplants. That suggests the success of the "do more with less" approach isn't just a one-off, but can be applied consistently to deliver results.

McD writes:

Over at ghacks, Martin Brinkmann writes:

Mozilla has added Pocket, a third-party "save for later" service, to Firefox Beta (and other development channels of the browser).

This is based on the proprietary former addon pocket, which is now no longer supported since it is being integrated.

It's only the beta channel, but this has all the hallmarks of a half-baked revenue stream for Mozilla that ultimately sells out user privacy - and what's worse, is opt-out, rather than opt-in.

Sponsored tiles on the new tab page, changing default search settings during updates, surrendering on DRM, and now this... Mozilla keeps finding ways to make it hard to stay a supporter. Here's hoping they hear some feedback on this decision before it gets out of beta!

What are the best available browser options for users wanting to protect their privacy as much as possible, as well as run a bloat-free browser? Pale Moon? Midori?

takyon writes:

Verizon Communications Inc.'s "VP of transformation" Sowmyanarayan Sampath has told the Genband Perspectives 2015 conference that migrating its central offices from copper to fiber enables huge savings:

Verizon has transformed only seven of its central offices from copper to fiber, but the benefits realized from the first seven have convinced it to do the same with its remaining 2,000-plus central offices. [...] The numbers, as Sampath broke them down, are pretty compelling. Verizon has 50 million square feet of CO real estate today, he said, 60% to 80% of which it does not need. It can take these locations down from 13 floors to only one or two, bringing about cost savings by paying less property tax and leasing the space for other usage.

And fiber has proven to be 70% to 90% more reliable than copper depending on the typology, he said. Verizon can pass some of the savings on to the customer. Overall, Verizon ends up realizing about 60% savings in dispatches and about 60% savings in energy and is able to create new revenues from upgrading its customers.

As to why Verizon is taking on this huge project now, at a time when no one is complaining about their copper networks, he said it's because copper revenue declines 8% to 10% every year and remains a fixed cost. The transition takes out a huge amount of cost for the carrier.

"The copper network today does not serve the need of our customers," Sampath said. "This is our way of truly transforming the network."

Verizon also plans to switch to fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) for all of its customers. The Register has this extra tidbit for Australians:

Regarding maintenance, Vulture South notes Australia's telecommunications minister Malcolm Turnbull has posted a "FTTN myth-busting" FAQ that states "No telecommunications company in the world has identified avoided copper maintenance costs as a compelling reason for deploying FTTP". That statement is no longer true. Turnbull's also often suggested to the Australian media that it consider overseas broadband rollouts as they represent useful experiences with which to consider development of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN). The Reg has contacted Turnbull's office seeking comment on Verizon's experience.

frojack writes:

One of the findings of the Federal Appeals court on Monday in the Apple vs Samsung affair, was that "trade dress" doesn't matter if some element of it has actual functionality.

According to CNN Money:

You would expect this would be an end of years of Rounded Corners jokes. But somehow, I suspect this will become an internet meme that will be with us for decades.

The story goes on to point out that not only is the trade dress tossed out, even the bulk of the penalty for other infringements, (calculated by a jury, apparently out of thin air) will have to be re-adjudicated by another jury.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Jennifer Medina reports at the NYT that the the city council of nation’s second-largest city voted by a 14-1 margin to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2020, in what is perhaps the most significant victory so far in the national push to raise the minimum wage. Several other cities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Oakland, Calif., have already approved increases, and dozens more are considering doing the same.

In 2014, a number of Republican-leaning states like Alaska and South Dakota also raised their state-level minimum wage by referendum. The impact is likely to be particularly strong in Los Angeles, where, according to some estimates, more than 40 percent of the city’s work force earns less than $15 an hour. “The proposal will bring wages up in a way we haven’t seen since the 1960s," says Michael Reich. "There’s a sense spreading that this is the new norm, especially in areas that have high costs of housing.”

It's important to remember that the minimum wage hike comes at a significant direct cost to business — well over a $1 billion a year, according to the mayor's analysis — and it would be foolish to pretend that it won't lead to some job losses and business closures. Critics say the increase will turn the city into a “wage island,” pushing businesses away into nearby places where they can pay employees less. “They are asking businesses to foot the bill on a social experiment that they would never do on their own employees,” says Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, a trade group that represents companies and other organizations in Southern California. “A lot of businesses aren’t going to make it. It’s great that this is an increase for some employees, but the sad truth is that a lot of employees are going to lose their jobs.”

AnonTechie writes:

A law requiring the mass installation of spyware on teenagers' smartphones suggests that the frightening level of population control exercised by its neighbours in "Best Korea" has rubbed off on the Republic's administrators in Seoul.

The Republic of South Korea's Communications Commission, a media regulator modeled after the United States' FCC, now requires telecom companies and parents to ensure a monitoring app is installed whenever anyone under the age of 19 receives a new smartphone.

The measure will only slowly come into force over the next few years as it doesn't require old smartphones be updated, although AP reports that most schools in South Korea sent out letters to parents encouraging them to install the software anyway.

One particular monitoring app called Smart Sheriff was funded and developed by the South Korean government with the declared intent of blocking children's access to pornography.

The app, however, effectively allows parents "to monitor how long their kids use their smartphones, how many times they use apps and which websites they visit.

Some send a child's location data to parents and issue an alert when a child searches keywords such as 'suicide', 'pregnancy' and 'bully' or receives messages with those words", reports AP.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/05/19/korean_law_mandates_spyware_installed_on_teenagers_smartphones_and_it_aint_north_korean/

After my last SN post the topic of moderation was brought up. Since its been quite awhile since we last openly discussed the state of moderation, I want to give the community a venue to discuss their feelings on it, and if the system needs further refinement. As a reminder, here's a review for how the system is currently setup:

• 5 mod points are handed out to at 00:10 UTC to users with positive karma
• ACs start at +0, users with karma less than 40 post at +1, users above that can post at +2
• You need 10 karma to mark some spam or troll
• Under normal circumstances, the staff do *not* have unlimited mod points, but can (and have) banned abusers of the moderation system

Please also review our SoylentNews Moderation Guidelines.

As always, we are willing to make changes to the system, but please post examples *with* links to any cases of suspected mod abuse. It's a lot easier to justify changing the system when evidence is in black and white. I also recommend that users make serious proposals on changes we can make. I'm not going to color the discussion with my own opinions, but as always, I will respond inline with comments when this goes live, and post a follow up article a few days after this one

kaszz writes:

Belgium's Privacy Protection Commission says that Facebook tramples on European privacy laws by tracking people online without their consent and dodges questions from national regulators. They have issued a set of recommendations for both Facebook, website owners and end users. Net-Security reports: "The recommendations are based on the results of an extensive analysis (67 page PDF) of Facebook's revised policies and terms which were rolled out on January 30, 2015. The analysis were conducted by the inter-university research center EMSOC/SPION, which concluded that the company is acting in violation of European law because Facebook places too much burden on its users to protect their privacy, and then doesn't offer simple tools and settings to do so, and sets up some problematic default settings. They also don't provide adequate information for users to make informed choices.

I'll assume that once TPP is in effect. Facebook will sue the Belgium government.

[2nd Editor's comment: Belgium shouldn't be affected by any trans-pacific agreements - unless Belgium has significantly changed its borders while no-one was looking. Perhaps kaszz meant the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership]

AnonTechie writes:

Machine learning can pinpoint rodent species that harbor diseases andgeographic hotspots vulnerable to new parasites and pathogens. So reports a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences led by Barbara A. Han, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of EcosystemStudies.

Most emerging infectious diseases are transmitted from animals to humans, with more than a billion people suffering annually. Safeguarding public health requires effective surveillance tools.

With University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology colleagues John Paul Schmidt, Sarah E. Bowden, and John M. Drake, Han employed machine learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to reveal patterns in an extensive set of data on more than 2,000 rodent species, with variables describing species' life history, ecology, behavior, physiology, and geographic distribution.

The team developed a model that was able to predict known rodent reservoir species with 90% accuracy, and identified particular traits that distinguish reservoirs from non-reservoirs. They revealed over 150 new potential rodent reservoir species and more than 50 new hyper-reservoirs - animals that may carry multiple pathogens infectious to humans.

http://phys.org/news/2015-05-future-infectious-disease-outbreaks.html

[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/05/14/1501598112

[Source]: http://www.caryinstitute.org/newsroom/forecasting-future-infectious-disease-outbreaks

"gewg_" writes:

Paul Buchheit reports via Common Dreams

An emotional response to any criticism of the Apple Corporation might be anticipated from the users of the company's powerful, practical, popular, and entertaining devices. Accolades to the company and a healthy profit are certainly well-deserved. But much-despised should be the theft from taxpayers and the exploitation of workers and customers, all cloaked within the image of an organization that seems to work magic on our behalf.

1. Apple Took Years of Public Research, Integrated the Results, and Packaged it as Their Own

2. Even After Taking Our Research, Apple Does Everything in its Power to Avoid Taxes

3. Overcharging Customers
The manufacturing cost of a 16 GB iPhone 6 is about $200, and with marketing it comes to about $288. But without an expensive phone contract with Verizon, AT&T, or one of the other wireless carriers, the cost to the customer is at least $650.

4. Underpaying and Mistreating Employees

5. Apple Has Figured Out How to Spend Most of its Untaxed Money on Itself

Apple's View:
The tax-avoiding, research-appropriating, cost-escalating, wage-minimizing, self-enriching Apple Corporation has, according to CEO Tim Cook,[1] a very strong moral compass.

[1] Link in article redirects.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Daniel McGraw writes that based on their demographic characteristics the Democratic and Republican parties face two very different futures. There’s been much written about how millennials are becoming a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, but there’s been much less attention paid to one of the biggest get-out-the-vote challenges for the Republican Party heading into the next presidential election: The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older and far more Republicans than Democrats have died since the 2012 elections. By combining presidential election exit polls with mortality rates per age group from the U.S. Census Bureau, McGraw calculated that, of the 61 million who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, about 2.75 million will be dead by the 2016 election. About 2.3 million of President Barack Obama’s voters have died too but that leaves a big gap in between, a difference of roughly 453,000 in favor of the Democrats. “I’ve never seen anyone doing any studies on how many dead people can’t vote,” laughs William Frey, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in demographic studies. “I’ve seen studies on how many dead people do vote. The old Daley Administration in Chicago was very good at that.”

Frey points out that, since Republicans are getting whiter and older, replacing the voters that leave this earth with young ones is essential for them to be competitive in presidential elections. "Millennials (born 1981 to 1997) now are larger in numbers than baby boomers ([born] 1946 to 1964), and how they vote will make the big difference. And the data says that if Republicans focus on economic issues and stay away from social ones like gay marriage, they can make serious inroads with millennials.” Exit polling indicates that millennials have split about 65-35 in favor of the Dems in the past two elections. If that split holds true in 2016, Democrats will have picked up a two million vote advantage among first-time voters. These numbers combined with the voter death data puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage going into 2016.

AnonTechie writes:

In a test of Bitcoin's ability to adapt to its own growing popularity, the Bitcoin community is facing a dilemma: how to change Bitcoin's core software so that the growing volume of transactions doesn't overwhelm the network. Some fear that the network, as it's currently designed, could become overwhelmed as early as next year.

The answer will help determine the form Bitcoin's network takes as it matures. But the loose-knit community of Bitcoin users is not in agreement over how it should proceed, and the nature of Bitcoin, a technology neither owned nor controlled by any one person or entity, could make the impending decision-making process challenging. At the very least it represents a cloud of uncertainty hanging over Bitcoin's long-term future.

The technical problem, which most agree is solvable, is that Bitcoin's network now has a fixed capacity for transactions. Before he or she disappeared, Bitcoin's mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, limited the size of a "block," or group of transactions, to one megabyte.

Under the one-megabyte-per-block limit, the network can process only about three transactions per second. If Bitcoin becomes a mainstream payment system, or even a platform for all kinds of other online business besides payments (see "Why Bitcoin Could Be Much More Than a Currency"), it's going to have to process a lot more. Visa, by comparison, says its network can process more than 24,000 transactions per second.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537486/leaderless-bitcoin-struggles-to-make-its-most-crucial-decision/

kaszz writes:

Burglars in the UK are sending unmanned drones over houses in order to identify potential targets, police have warned. Suffolk Constabulary confirmed it had received at least one report of drones being used by burglars for surveillance of properties ("casing the joint"). Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detectives Forum, said: "Drones can be noisy and very visible so hopefully criminals risk giving themselves away. If members of the public observe drones being used in areas which make them suspicious they should contact police using the 101 non-emergency number to report it."

Why not just shoot them down? "Oops I thought it was a bird." The task can surely be automated. Obligatory xkcd.