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c0lo writes:

Speaking of bugs, Ars Technica carried a story about the resurgence of tropical diseases in south Texas (with a title almost inviting Betteridge's law: "Can America cope with a resurgence of tropical disease?").

One rainy Friday morning in March 2015, Dr. Laila Woc-Colburn saw two patients with neurocysticercosis (a parasitic infection of the brain) and one with Chagas disease, which is transmitted by insects nicknamed ‘kissing bugs.’ Having attended medical school in her native Guatemala, she was used to treating these kinds of diseases. But she was not in Guatemala anymore—this was Houston, Texas.

[...] “While we were calling them neglected tropical diseases, the ‘tropical’ part is probably a misnomer,” says Hotez. “Most of the world’s neglected tropical diseases are in wealthy countries. It’s the poor living among the wealthy.”

Once aggressive government-funded eradication programs finally halted local malaria transmission, the optimism of the 1950s and early 1960s—combined with the advent of life-saving antibiotics and anti-parasitic drugs—made infectious diseases seem like ancient relics.
“People thought that specializing in infectious diseases would be a waste of time because they would soon be history,” says Lucas Blanton, an infectious disease physician at the University of Texas Medical Branch.

[...] Edwards knows a few things about Chagas: it is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi and spread by a group of insects called Triatoma, or ‘kissing bugs’ (because they like to bite near the mouth). .... Chagas is a major problem in Latin America, where an estimated 8 million people are infected.

[...] Edwards’ new patient, however, had never been to Latin America. She had never even left the USA. She was, Edwards explains, “your All-American girl,” hardly a candidate for a disease that mainly infected poor, rural populations in Central and South America. ... The case has stayed with Edwards for several reasons, the main one being the mystery of how the girl became infected if she’d never left the country. But south Texas is home to the same kissing bugs that transmit Chagas. The answer, then, had to be this: she had been infected with Chagas in Texas. And she was unlikely to be the only one.

[...] Results from studies that tested donated blood for Chagas support the idea that it is a major problem in Texas. A 2014 study showed that one out of every 6,500 people who donated blood screened positive for Chagas—almost 50 times more than the CDC’s estimate that one in 300,000 Americans was infected.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

A press event gets not one but six bomb threats and it's not covered by any major news outlet that day aside from a few paragraphs on Forbes.com? Is it just me or would not the mainstream media eat this much meta up with a spoon if any topic other than #GamerGate were being discussed?

The first threat was made at 1:15 pm ET, but attendees chose to stay. Later, a specific threat was phoned into The Miami Herald and the Miami PD, claiming that a bomb would go off at 2:45 pm ET. At this point, attendees and panelists exited the building and eventually finished their discussion outside.

You can watch both the morning panel and the interrupted afternoon panel on the SPJ AirPlay YouTube channel.

The most interesting bit to me though is the difference in how differently #GamerGate and its critics handle anonymous threats. Finishing the event in the parking lot then throwing a party just has more style.

AnonTechie writes:

conspiracy-theories dept.

If you haven't ever played Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts or FreeCell, it's safe to say you're in the minority. These simple Windows games have probably caused more lost worker hours than anything short of a worldwide coffee shortage. Whichever one was your favorite, the temptation to take just one more go at beating them—to get a faster time or a better score—was hard to ignore.

But as fun as these games were, they weren't actually designed for entertainment. At least not in their Windows incarnations.

The oldest of the four, Microsoft Solitaire, was first added to Windows 3.0 in 1990. Although the game (sometimes called "Patience") has existed since the late 1700s, this digital version seemed to be demonstrating that in the future we would no longer require a physical deck to play simple card games. But that's not what it was doing at all. Its real aim was far more modest: it was teaching mouse-fluency by stealth.

The intention was that Solitaire would get a generation of computer users still most familiar with a command-line input to teach themselves how to drag and drop, without realizing that's what they were doing. The fact that we're still dragging and dropping today suggests that it worked rather well.

http://mentalfloss.com/uk/technology/32106/the-true-purpose-of-solitaire-minesweeper-hearts-and-freecell

It is highly probable that SN members were aware of the true purpose of these games but the article seemed interesting nevertheless.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Millions of people visiting weather.com, drudgereport.com, wunderground.com, and other popular websites were exposed to attacks that can surreptitiously hijack their computers, thanks to maliciously manipulated ads that exploit vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash and other browsing software, researchers said.

The malvertising campaign worked by inserting malicious code into ads distributed by AdSpirit.de, a network that delivers ads to Drudge, Wunderground, and other third-party websites, according to a post published Thursday by researchers from security firm Malwarebytes. The ads, in turn, exploited security vulnerabilities in widely used browsers and browser plugins that install malware on end-user computers. The criminals behind the campaign previously carried out a similar attack on Yahoo's ad network, exposing millions more people to the same drive-by attacks.

Update: A few hours after Ars published this article, Malwarebytes updated the blog post to say the campaign had moved to yet another ad network, which happens to be associated with AOL. Visitors to eBay were among those who were exposed to the malicious ads distributed through the newly discovered network.

Perhaps a positive side-effect of these exploits is the average person may come to pay more attention to security and privacy.

Original Submission

cosurgi writes:

I witnessed the events as they unfolded yesterday, I'll try to give as objective summary as possible. Here's what happened:

The bitcoin blocksize is currently limited to 1MB. Two out of five bitcoin developers who have access to repository are worried that this is not enough to compete with VISA (in the number of transactions processed per second). The dispute to increase the blocksize has been ongoing for months. The two developers suggested to use the bitcoin built-in voting process (which has been designed in it ages ago), where the voting goes as follows:

1. the software is updated in such a way that larger block sizes are not used unless 750 out of past 1000 blocks are mined by miners who in the blockheader say "yes to bigger blocksize".

2. If such blocks (which are still below 1MB, but simply have this "yes" vote) are not mined, then the status-quo remains and nothing happens.

Three other developers have blocked any commits, and dedicated themselves to maintain the even stronger status-quo, by simply disallowing such vote to proceed. The two other developers finally decided to publish a new bitcoin client, called bitcoin XT, which has only one small change that would allow such voting to proceed. The linked blogpost presents one side of this argument, honestly I couldn't find a blogpost that would present the opposing viewpoint. If someone here has a link to nice writeup done by the other side of this argument please let us know.

The bitcoin reddit got furious yesterday night (to the point of a civil war with moderators), when the top voted and most discussed thread "why is bitcoin forking?" was deleted by one of the moderators. Interesting to note, that it had 528 upvotes at the moment of deletion and currently it has 687 upvotes, and also googling for 'why is bitcoin forking' links to this deleted thread. Before it was deleted the discussion seemed reasonable, now it's just a Streisand effect about censorship and about how few influential people are trying to prevent the voting from happening.

What it means for regular bitcoin users? Here's how it goes:

1. If the voting rejects the larger blocksize then both bitcoin clients, 'bitcoin' and 'bitcoin XT' will work as normal on the same blockchain. And in fact nothing will happen, people will be able to choose which client to use and eventually the 'bitcoin XT' will lose its momentum, fade out and stop being used.

2. If the voting goes in favor of larger blocksize, then both bitcoin clients will start operating on two different blockchains. The 'bitcoin XT' blockchain will have 75% of hashing power (by the definition of how this vote is implemented), and the 'bitcoin' blockchain wil have the remaining 25% of hashing power. Shops and exchanges will run aghast in circles trying to protect from double spending by quickly upgrading their software to use the stronger 'bitcoin XT' blockchain. The weaker blockchain with only 25% hashing power will be susceptible to attacks. And whatever bitcoins you have right now will co-exist twice in each of those blockchains. You would be able to spend them in one of the blockchains and keep them for yourself in the other blockchain. People who have changed to 'bitcoin XT' client beforehand will be safe from whatever might happen with the weaker chain, since their clients work with both blockchains, until they acquire the voting 75% majority.

The voting process as it happens can be seen live on site that shows number of clients and mined blocks that opted for larger blocksize.

I know that perhaps I am not as objective as I wanted to be. I tried to present the facts only, if I failed, then blame me and correct me in the comments. Happy discussing!

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

ArsTechnica has an interesting article about the security, or lack thereof, in Parrot A.R. drones.

In two separate presentations at Def Con in Las Vegas last weekend, security experts demonstrated vulnerabilities in two consumer drones from Parrot. The simplest of the attacks could make Parrot drones, including the company's Bebop model, fall from the sky with a keystroke.

In a live demonstration at Def Con's Internet of Things Village on August 8, Ryan Satterfield of the security consulting firm Planet Zuda demonstrated a takedown of a Parrot A.R.Drone by exploiting the drone's built-in Wi-Fi and an open telnet port on the drone's implementation of the BusyBox real-time operating system. Connecting to the drone gave him root access to the controller, and he was able to kill the processes controlling flight—causing the drone to drop to the ground.

In a session at DEF CON on August 9, researcher Michael Robinson, a security analyst and adjunct professor at Stevenson University in Maryland and George Mason University in Northern Virginia, dove further into the vulnerabilities of Parrot's drones, discussing his research on the Bebop drone in a session entitled, "Knocking My Neighbor's Kid's Cruddy Drone Offline."

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

Common Dreams reports:

The death toll from this week's fiery explosions at the Chinese port of Tianjin climbed above 100 on Saturday, while confusion spread over whether authorities had ordered the evacuation of everyone within two miles amid fears of chemical contamination.

[...] Anti-chemical warfare troops have entered the site, according to the BBC.

[...] Two Chinese news outlets, including the state-run The Paper, reported that the warehouse was storing 700 tons of sodium cyanide--70 times more than it should have been holding at one time--and that authorities were rushing to clean it up.

Sodium cyanide is a toxic chemical that can form a flammable gas upon contact with water.

[...] "The company that owned the warehouse where the blasts originated, Rui Hai International Logistics, appears to have violated Chinese law by operating close to apartment buildings and worker dormitories", journalist Andrew Jacobs reports for [NYTimes] (paywall). "Residents say they were unaware that the company was handling dangerous materials."

About 6,300 people have been displaced by the blasts, with around 721 injured and 33 in serious condition, Xinhua news agency said. At least 21 firefighters are reported dead.

Related: Large Warehouse Explosions Injure 300-400 in Tianjin, China

For the adulterated baby formula abuses of 2008 (4 infants dead; 12,892 hospitalized), 2 people were executed. One wonders what will come of this case.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

The Supreme Court was asked in a petition to force the government to disclose the US clandestine plan to disable cell service during emergencies.
...
The Electronic Privacy Information Center told the high court's justices Tuesday that the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's decision created a new "catchall provision that can be used in any case involving records related to domestic and national security programs." (PDF)

The privacy group had demanded the documents from the Department of Homeland Security in 2011 following the shuttering of cell service in the San Francisco Bay Area subway system to quell a protest. The Department of Homeland Security refused to divulge the documents associated with SOP 303, which the appeals court described as a "unified voluntary process for the orderly shut-down and restoration of wireless services during critical emergencies such as the threat of radio-activated improvised explosive devices."

In recent protests in Hong Kong the government shutdown cell service in the area of the protests. The protesters used FireChat to get around the restrictions.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe will be publishing a new book in November, but it's already become Amazon's #1 best-seller in two "Science & Math" subcategories, for mechanics and scientific instruments. Inspired by a cartoon describing NASA's Saturn V rocket as "the up-goer V", Randall's created a large-format collection of blueprints describing datacenters, tectonic plates, and even the controls in an airplane cockpit — using only the thousand most common English words. "Since this book explains things, I've called it Thing Explainer," Randall writes on the XKCD blog, trying to mimic the humorously simple style of his book. Randall's previous book of scientific hypotheticals [What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions] — published nearly one year ago — is still Amazon's #1 best-selling book in their "Physics" category, ranking higher than Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Reuters reports:

An Indonesian domestic passenger aircraft carrying 54 people lost contact with air traffic control on Sunday in the remote eastern Papua region, the National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) said. "Lost contact with plane," BASARNAS chief Bambang Soelystyo told Reuters by phone.

According to the official BASARNAS Twitter account, the aircraft belonging to Trigana Air Service was carrying 44 adult passengers, five crew and five children and infants.

[...] An AirAsia passenger jet crashed en route from the Indonesian city of Surabaya to Singapore last December, killing all 162 people on board. The crash prompted the government to introduce regulations aimed at improving safety.

BBC.

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"gewg_" writes:

Hack-a-Day reports:

[Jason Scott of Textfiles.com] found 25,000 manuals for all kinds of electronic items. The collection goes back to the '30s. Jason wants to save them and the current owner of the collection needs the space.

[...] The plan is to arrive Monday morning, along with $900 of bankers boxes [that] an anonymous donor paid for and start putting these manuals into boxes. I am then going to rent a nearby (1 mile away) Storage Unit, using a rented truck from a nearby Truck Rental place (2 miles).

The warehouse is located in Finksburg, MD, about 30 miles northwest of Baltimore.

The more people who I can get to show up to the place during the day or early evening, the better. The more people who throw money at me via paypal (jason at textfiles dot com) so I can pay the $250/month storage unit fee until the end of the year (so this can get an appropriate home), the better.

There are duplicates of some items; Scott will keep only 1 copy of each item, with the rest going into a dumpster.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Actually, "it" (the bizarre-looking creature) is Bathyphysa conifer, a deep-sea critter that was recently seen swimming off the coast of Angola. Workers at the oil and gas company BP videotaped this strange-looking animal while collecting video footage some 4,000 feet (1,220 meters) under the sea with a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV). Not knowing what the noodle-armed creature was, the BP crewmembers named it after what they thought it most resembled: the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Similar to corals, the spaghettilike B. conifer is made up of many different multicellular organisms known as zooids. These organisms are a lot like regular, solitary animals, except that they're attached to other zooids, forming a more complex organism. One zooid, developed from a fertilized egg, starts the process, and then other zooids bud from the original zooid until a whole animal is formed, according to the siphonophore website.

The implications for Pastafarianism are staggering.

Original Submission

mendax writes:

The New York Times published a story today that confirms what has long been suspected, AT&T was not just one of the means by which the NSA did its domestic eavesdropping, it was a willing partner:

The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”

AT&T’s cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013. AT&T has given the N.S.A. access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks. It provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at the United Nations headquarters, a customer of AT&T.

The article ends with a curious statement from an AT&T spokesman:

“We do not voluntarily provide information to any investigating authorities other than if a person’s life is in danger and time is of the essence,” Brad Burns, an AT&T spokesman, said. He declined to elaborate.

I think his nose grew a few inches after telling that whopper.

This story is the latest revelation out of the cache of goodies taken from the NSA by Edward Snowden. I am drooling with anticipation at the next tidbit.

Also submitted by Phoenix666 and takyon

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Koko the gorilla is best known for a lifelong study to teach her a silent form of communication, American Sign Language. But some of the simple sounds she has learned may change the perception that humans are the only primates with the capacity for speech.

In 2010, Marcus Perlman started research work at The Gorilla Foundation, where Koko has spent more than 40 years living immersed with humans -- interacting for many hours each day with psychologist Penny Patterson and biologist Ron Cohn.

"I went there with the idea of studying Koko's gestures, but as I got into watching videos of her, I saw her performing all these amazing vocal behaviors," says Perlman, now a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology Professor Gary Lupyan.

The vocal and breathing behaviors Koko had developed were not necessarily supposed to be possible.

The role of language in intelligence and the evolution of consciousness is fascinating. It's profound that apes can begin to learn it within the right social context. Still, humans do it quite innately.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A new generation of economists is trying to transform global development policy through the power of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
...
"We have learned something about why immunization rates are low," says Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, who was involved in the 2010 experiment and is working with Haryana [India] on its latest venture. The problem is not necessarily that people are opposed to immunization, she says. It is that certain obstacles, such as lack of time or money, are making it difficult for them to attend the clinics. "And you can balance that difficulty with a little incentive," she says.

This is one of a flood of insights from researchers who are revolutionizing the field of economics with experiments designed to rigorously test how well social programmes work. Their targets range from education programmes to the prevention of traffic accidents. Their preferred method is the randomized trial. And so they have come to be known as the 'randomistas'.

... the randomista movement is gaining momentum (see 'Scale the heights'). Universities are pumping out more economics graduate students with experience in RCTs every year. Organizations ranging from the UK Department for International Development to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington, are throwing their financial support behind the technique. "There are hundreds and hundreds of randomized trials going on, and ten years ago that just wasn't the case," says economist Dean Karlan at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who is at the forefront of the movement. "We've changed the conversation."

Can adopting more rigorous practices from the physical sciences work for economics and economic policy?