SoylentNews

eof writes:

The site iflscience.com calls attention to the following item:

With a new toy to play with, it was always clear that someone was going to take it a little further. And in the case of YouTube user Gasturbine101, it wasn't enough to watch the view from the drone with his feet safely on the ground.

Meet "Swarm", described by the uploader of the video as The Manned Aerial Vehicle Multirotor Super Drone... which can basically be described as a bunch of drones, strapped together with a seat added in. It would appear its creator spent a considerable amount of time, effort and funds on the project, as he states it cost him approximately £6,000 (that's $9,200) and has a 54 counter-rotation [sic] propellers, a take-off weight of 148 kilograms (326 pounds) and a maximum run time of 10 minutes.

The accompanying 6 minute video suggests that drone parts were used, not drones. The video only shows attempts at hovering and does not get into any details regarding control.

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Phoenix666 writes:

The Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci once wrote (in translation) that 'the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear'. Although Gramsci was not speaking about data privacy, it seems to us that this statement could apply to the current state of data protection regulation around the world, which is marked by a realization that existing regulatory models are not working effectively, the lack of political will to explore alternatives, and general frustration about how to improve the situation. This has led to a credibility gap between the objectives of data protection law and how personal data are protected in practice.

It should not be this way. The importance of data privacy has never been greater, and countries and regional organizations around the world are enacting legislation in an attempt to protect it. Much of this legislation has been based on the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46, which will be replaced by the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation if the EU can ever finalize its interminable legislative process. Even the White House, which for years had seemed to oppose any large-scale federal legislation to deal with data processing in the private sector, has called for enactment of a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights Act to grant increased protection to the online processing of personal data. Regional organizations such as Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, the Economic Community of West African States, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and others have also done extensive work to enact new privacy instruments or amend their existing ones. All this activity has also had an effect at the global level, with the UN General Assembly passing a resolution that affirms the 'right to privacy in the digital age'.

But the increasing amount of new data protection regulation raises an important point: is all of this making any difference in increasing the protection of data privacy in practice?

The article is an academic one that's too detailed for any summary to do it justice, but it takes a good run at codifying the issue.

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Phoenix666 writes:

Like a lot of people, I'm drowning in words. It's no wonder then that speed reading—reading at an increased speed with no loss of comprehension—is an increasingly popular recourse for both the GTD (Get Things Done) crowd and anyone who worships at the altar of productivity. Who wouldn't want to breeze through their reading list at 2,500+ words per minute and devour Johnny Five levels of input?

That's more or less the promise that Evelyn Wood's Reading Dynamics, Tim Ferriss' PX Project, software called Spritz, and countless other speed-reading techniques make to overwhelmed readers. Some involve suppressing your inner speech while reading. Others teach you to "chunk," or take in multiple lines of text in a single glance. Still others eliminate the need to move your eyes at all. Unfortunately, decades worth of psychological research and more recent insights into the visual processing system seem to confirm only one thing: Doing things quicker means doing them less accurately. Can you learn to read faster? Absolutely. But you won't understand what you've read nearly as well ... if at all.

Much would seem to depend on the material you're trying to read and comprehend.

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"gewg_" let us know about some news from The Register:

On the Microsoft side, it is once again patch Tuesday. With a somewhat biased and flamebaity article, El Reg reports:

[On September 8, Microsoft] released patches for 56 security vulnerabilities in its products. People should apply the updates as soon as possible because miscreants are actively exploiting at least two of the holes--and likely more by the time you read this.

The September patch batch includes [five] critical fixes [covering] Internet Explorer and Edge, Office, and Windows. Users and administrators are being advised to test and install the updates on the double.

Of the 56 vulnerabilities, 14 in Internet Explorer, four in the supposedly super-whizzbang-secure Edge browser, one in Windows' handling of OpenType fonts, four in Windows' Journal file handling, and four in Microsoft Office, allow an attacker to remotely execute evil code on a victim's system.

On the Linux side, Debian has had a major patching spree as well. El Reg reports (with much bias in the opposite direction) that Jessie and Wheezy have a combined 372 updates being released. Of these 244 are security patches.

Popular GNU/Linux distribution Debian published the second update to its "Jessie" stable release over the weekend and the ninth update for its older "Wheezy" edition.

Debian Jessie 8.2 "mainly adds corrections for security problems to the stable release, along with a few adjustments for serious problems", according to the distro's announcement of its new release. The Reg has counted 60 security fixes and 68 updated packages in the new release.

By our count Wheezy 7.9, also revealed over the weekend, updates 60 packages and offers 184 security fixes.

[Editors Note: This submission was heavily edited to show both sides of the coin.]

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takyon writes:

Microsoft announced that it will be adopting the VP9 video codec in its Edge web browser:

For now, Microsoft will support software decoding for VP9, but where the hardware exists (typically on some mobile chips), hardware decoding will also be supported for more efficient video playback. For software decoding, Microsoft recommends more powerful PCs. This is also why, for now, the VP9 support will be enabled only as an experimental flag in the Edge browser.

Microsoft Edge will support VP9's adaptive streaming using Media Source Extensions in the initial implementation, which will be detectable using the MediaSource.isTypeSupported() API. Microsoft said it is also working on future support for VP9 for media tags and local playback.

The company is also considering support for other codecs such as OGG, Vorbis and Opus. Opus, especially, tends to be paired with VP9 in the WebM container format, which YouTube currently uses by default.

Microsoft recently became part of the Alliance for Open Media, where companies such as Mozilla, Google, Cisco, Intel, Amazon and others will work on improving upon VP9, Daala and Thor to create a single open source and royalty-free video codec that everyone can use without limits.

Related: Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, et al Partner To Create Next-Gen Video Codec

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Phoenix666 writes:

I have been part robot since May. Instead of legs, I move on gyroscopically stabilized wheels. Instead of a face, I have an iPad screen. Instead of eyes, a camera with no peripheral vision. Instead of a mouth, a speaker whose volume I can't even gauge with my own ears. And instead of ears, a tinny microphone that crackles and hisses with every high note.

I'm a remote worker; while most of WIRED is in San Francisco, I live in Boston. We IM. We talk on the phone. We tweet at each other, but I am often left out of crucial face-to-face meetings, spontaneous brainstorm sessions, gossip in the kitchen.

So my boss found a solution: a telepresence robot from Double Robotics, which would be my physical embodiment at headquarters, extending myself through technology. Specifically, an iPad on a stick on a Segway-like base. The telepresence robot market is crowded, ranging from high-end offerings like iRobot's Ava (starting price: $69K) to the relatively more affordable Double, which starts at $2,499. The company says it has sold nearly 5,000 of them since its launch in 2012. Mostly these go to big corporations like IBM and McDonald's, but I've heard of teachers and hospitals using them, too. Supposedly all a Double needs to work is a strong Wi-Fi signal.

TFA features a companion video. I am...at a loss for words.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

"I can take echoes of a fake car and put them at any location I want," says Jonathan Petit, Principal Scientist at Security Innovation, a software security company. "And I can do the same with a pedestrian or a wall."

Using such a system, attackers could trick a self-driving car into thinking something is directly ahead of it, thus forcing it to slow down. Or they could overwhelm it with so many spurious signals that the car would not move at all for fear of hitting phantom obstacles.

In a paper written while he was a research fellow in the University of Cork's Computer Security Group and due to be presented at the Black Hat Europe security conference in November, Petit describes a simple setup he designed using a low-power laser and a pulse generator. "It's kind of a laser pointer, really. And you don't need the pulse generator when you do the attack," he says. "You can easily do it with a Raspberry Pi or an Arduino. It's really off the shelf."

Now that these exploits are poised to create real physical effects in the real world, are we about to enter a golden age of hackers? Who'll waste their time defacing websites when you can force the expressway to stop so you have no traffic on the way to work?

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Phoenix666 writes:

The BBC is fighting back against the government's aggressive TV licence fee budget by promising to open up several of its services, including its much admired iPlayer streaming platform, to third-party content creators. The broadcaster also wants to introduce new Internet-led streaming services such as BBC Newstream, a video-led mobile news channel, and iPlay, a version of iPlayer designed for children.

In addition, the BBC hopes to offset its slimmer budget by offering premium content alongside its free offering for TV licence fee payers. This would include experimenting with launching entire seasons of programming at once online, much in the way that Netflix does, to allow for "binge watching." Other types of programming could be offered, too, and while the BBC notes that its iPlayer platform is the most likely candidate for distributing this new content, "there are other ideas too," which it is currently discussing with potential partners.

Perhaps the bigger story in the article is the budget cuts the UK government has implemented for the BBC. It is nearly the last bastion of journalism in the English language, now that the New York Times is fading away.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

I have a problem. It is a problem I try to hide out of sight and out of mind, one I try to pretend doesn't exist. But it does, and every so often it raises its ugly head to bite me. Most recently, I needed to replace an Ethernet switch as I needed more ports. As I unplugged the old switch, my monitor turned off. Why? Because under my desk I have a cable catastrophe. The mere act of unplugging the old switch had so disturbed and enraged the rat's nest of cables under my desk that in retaliation it decided to turn off my monitor.

So intertwined and confused is the mess beneath my desk that even the most mundane of acts—plugging in a new gadget, removing an old one, sometimes just even moving my feet—threatens to destroy everything.

TFA addresses the perennial problem of cable jungles. I use zip ties. What are the best solutions Soylentils have come up with, and what are their pros and cons?

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cafebabe writes:

The BBC reports that the Earth has approximately 3×10¹² trees. This is significantly larger than the previous estimate of 4×10¹¹ trees.

The BBC also reports that some trees have particular resistance to wildfires:

More than 20,000 hectares of forest were charred. But in the middle of the devastation, a group of cypresses was still standing tall and green.

When a fire swept through an experimental plot in Andilla, in the Spanish province of Valencia in 2012, it gave researchers the perfect opportunity. The plot, which was part of CypFire, a project financed by the European Union, was established during the 1980s to test the resistance of more than 50 varieties of Mediterranean cypress to a pathogenic fungus. After the fire event of 2012, it also provided further anecdotal evidence of the peculiar resilience of the species in the face of fire. Botanist Bernabé Moya and his brother, environmental engineer José Moya, both from the department of monumental trees in Valencia, had been involved in the project for several years.

"On our way to what we knew would be a Dante-esque scene during that tragic summer, we felt deep sadness at the thought of losing a plot of such value to the conservation of biodiversity," Bernabé Moya told BBC Mundo.

"But we had hope that perhaps some of the cypresses had survived."

"When we got there we saw that all the common oaks, holm oaks, pines and junipers had completely burnt. But only 1.27% of the Mediterranean cypresses had ignited."

Further research reveals that cypress trees are wetter than other trees but this characteristic was missed due to lab research using dry samples. Cypress trees may or may not be suitable as natural, bio-diverse, fire breaks.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket finds another interesting story in The Register:

Facebook has been hit with a class-action complaint over its biometrics slurpage, with millions of possible plaintiffs who may claim damages if the advertising giant is found to have acted unlawfully.

The complaint (PDF) states that "Facebook has created, collected and stored over a billion 'face templates' (or 'face prints')", which, ostensibly, are as uniquely identifiable as fingerprints. These have been gathered "from over a billion individuals, millions of whom reside in the State of Illinois".

It is alleged that in doing this, the ZuckerBorg is in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which was passed by the state legislature in 2008.

As noted in the complaint, under BIPA a private entity such as Facebook is prohibited from obtaining or possessing an individual's biometrics unless it achieves suitable consent, which is constituted by:

• Informing that person in writing that biometric identifiers or information will be collected or stored
• Informing that person in writing of the specific purpose and length of term for which such biometric identifiers or biometric information is being collected, stored and used
• Receiving a written release from the person for the collection of his or her biometric identifiers or information
• Publishing publicly available written retention schedules and guidelines for permanently destroying biometric identifiers and biometric information

In direct violation of... BIPA, Facebook is actively collecting, storing, and using – without providing notice, obtaining informed written consent or publishing data retention policies – the biometrics of its users and unwitting non-users.

The plaintiff asserts that he does not have, and has never had, a Facebook account, but notes that a Facebook user uploaded to Facebook at least one photograph depicting him which has resulted in the non-consensual creation of a biometric template of his face. The action is brought on behalf of a class of similarly situated individuals, defined as:

All non-Facebook users who, while residing in the State of Illinois, had their biometric identifiers, including "face templates" (or "face prints"), collected, captured, received, or otherwise obtained by Facebook.

[...]

More recently, an attempt to establish a voluntary code of conduct for the commercial use of facial recognition technology on a federal level in the US came to a practical halt in June when privacy advocates withdrew from the talks en masse.

The advocates, including the ACLU and EFF, complained of failing to get industry stakeholders "to agree on any concrete scenario where companies should employ facial recognition only with a consumer's permission".

The class action complaint was filed in the United States District Court, Northern District of Illinois, and is case number 1:15-cv-07681.

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Gaaark writes:

A malicious Android app that held people to ransom has been discovered by researchers at security firm Zscaler. Adult Player appeared to offer pornography, but secretly took pictures of users with the phone's front-facing camera. It then locked the user's device and displayed a demand for $500 (£330) which was difficult to bypass.

From the BBC:

In August, Intel Security said examples of ransomware had increased 127% since 2014 - primarily affecting desktop computers and laptops.

"One of the reasons for the increase is that it's very easy to make," said Raj Samani, chief technology officer for Intel Security in Europe. "There are people you can pay to do the work for you, and it pays really well. One group we tracked made more than $75,000 in 10 weeks. "Apps like this rely on the embarrassment factor. If you don't pay, your reputation is on the line."

Adult Player was the second example of pornography-focused ransomware discovered by Zscaler. The app was not available from vetted storefronts such as Google Play, but could be installed directly from a webpage. Zscaler said the app's ransom message kept the phone's screen switched on at all times, and reappeared if the handset was restarted.

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Sir Finkus writes:

Scientists hoping to preserve coral reefs have developed an autonomous submarine to help control populations of crown-of-thorns sea stars. The sea stars devour coral at alarming rates, and are surprisingly hardy. Missing limbs simply regrow after being removed, so scuba divers have had to resort to injecting the starfish with poison up to 10 times each.

The autonomous robot can stay underwater for up to six hours, and uses a new poison that requires only one injection. The robot identifies the sea stars using a sophisticated image processing algorithm. The new poison is allegedly harmless to other sea creatures.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Serena Williams is three matches from winning her fifth consecutive Grand Slam tournament after advancing to the U.S. Open quarterfinals. But Carl Bailik writes at 538 that winning doesn't have to be so difficult for one of tennis's all-time greats and her top rivals. While women play best of three sets at Grand Slams, the men play best of five. That means male stars have more chances to exert their superiority over opponents and the opportunity to stage hard-fought comebacks even after falling behind by two sets because generally in sports, the longer the match is, the better chance the better player will win.

At the U.S. Open, for example, only three of the top 10 women's seeds reached the third round, while nine of the top 10 men's seeds did. The early exits of top women's stars from major tournaments has led some commentators to label them as inconsistent but Stephanie Kovalchik, a statistician at the RAND Corp., blames the best-of-three format. Kovalchik studied match results in non-Slam tournaments where both men and women play best of three and found that women are no less consistent than men when competing under the same format.

Women's Tennis Association chief Stacey Allaster said in 2013 that Women's Tennis Association players were willing to play best of five sets at the Slams, but her statement hasn't led to any real movement for change. After Serena Williams' latest comeback from a lost first set Friday, Balik asked Williams whether she'd rather have the increased margin for error provided by the best-of-five-sets format. "I totally could" play best of five, said Williams. "But [it] doesn't matter to me. Best of five, best of seven, whatever."

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fleg writes:

A thought provoking article by Stephen Hsu, Vice-President for Research and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University.

Essentially he suggests that the fear of human level AI is unwarranted, because alongside its development, will be the development of human genome editing techniques which will be able to increase the IQ of humans.

These two threads—smarter people and smarter machines—will inevitably intersect. Just as machines will be much smarter in 2050, we can expect that the humans who design, build, and program them will also be smarter.

Its an interesting idea, but I'm not sure I buy it. Whilst we may indeed eventually know enough to edit the human genome to increase IQ, it might be tricky to justify the experiments on ethical grounds. Its one thing to edit it to avoid disease, its another to do it just to see if you can get a higher IQ.

He then goes on to speculate what this future might look like...

Better human minds invent better machine learning methods, which in turn accelerate our ability to improve human DNA and create even better minds.

[...] The feedback loop between algorithms and genomes will result in a rich and complex world, with myriad types of intelligences at play: the ordinary human (rapidly losing the ability to comprehend what is going on around them); the enhanced human (the driver of change over the next 100 years, but perhaps eventually surpassed); and all around them vast machine intellects, some alien (evolved completely in silico) and some strangely familiar (hybrids). Rather than the standard science-fiction scenario of relatively unchanged, familiar humans interacting with ever-improving computer minds, we will experience a future with a diversity of both human and machine intelligences. For the first time, sentient beings of many different types will interact collaboratively to create ever greater advances, both through standard forms of communication and through new technologies allowing brain interfaces.

He ends with...

New gods will arise, as mysterious and familiar as the old.

Original Submission