SoylentNews

frojack writes:

BBC News reports that a benign wifi virus is infecting vulnerable home routers and patching the router software so as harden them against malware attacks.

And so far, researchers at Symantec can't find that the the virus does anything malicious. In fact, Symantec wonders: Is there an Internet-of-Things vigilante out there?

Still there are worries, because there are cryptographically protected back doors in Wifatch that allows only the authors to re-connect. Symantec isn't even sure what to recommend as far as removal or mitigation.

Initial infection is suspected to come via the management telnet port being open to the internet. Hopefully no Soylentils would be guilty of that!

But we gotta ask, does anyone believe there is such a thing as a White-Hat virus? Or do those back doors speak louder than actions?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Satellite photos analyzed by IHS Janes show China has dramatically ramped up efforts to construct a second aircraft carrier—the first to be built indigenously there. While the new ship will likely not be a match for US aircraft carriers, it is important for a number of reasons, and representative of China's ambitions to be a naval superpower. The ship is in "advanced state of construction" in a Dailan shipyard, according to analysis of commercial satellite images by IHS Jane's. And China's goal is reportedly to launch the new carrier by this December (in time for Mao Zedong's 122nd birthday), and outfit it by the end of next year.

China's plans to build new carriers have not exactly been a secret. Construction of the ship started in March, and was confirmed to be a carrier by Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) officials speaking to Hong Kong Commercial Daily. The new carrier, called the Type 001A, will include technology currently only used aboard US carriers, according to PLA Navy senior officers: an electromagnetic catapult that will allow aircraft to be launched with greater fuel and weapons loads. That would put China into a very exclusive club.

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basstard writes:

For thousands of years, humans have taken a masochistic pleasure from adding chilli to their food. Now research indicates that the spice that has undoubtedly made our lives more interesting may also make them longer.

There is only one mammal that enthusiastically eats chillies. "Humans come into the Western hemisphere about 20,000 years ago," says Paul Bosland from New Mexico State University. "And they come into contact with a plant that gives them pain - it hurts them. Yet five separate times, chilli peppers were domesticated in the Western hemisphere because humans found some usefulness - and I think it was their medicinal use."

The potential for both health and harm has always been a defining characteristic of chilli peppers, and among scientists, doctors and nutritionists it remains a matter of some dispute which prevails. A huge study, published this summer in the British Medical Journal, seemed to indicate that a diet filled with spices - including chillies - was beneficial for health. A team at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences tracked the health of nearly half a million participants in China for several years. They found that participants who said they ate spicy food once or twice a week had a mortality rate 10% lower than those who ate spicy food less than once a week. Risk of death reduced still further for hot-heads who ate spicy food six or seven days a week. Chilli peppers were the most commonly used spice among the sample, and those who ate fresh chilli had a lower risk of death from cancer, coronary heart disease and diabetes.

One of the authors of the study, Lu Qi - who confesses that he is very keen on spicy food - says there are likely to be many reasons for this effect. "The data encourages people to eat more spicy food to improve health and reduce mortality risk at an early age," says Qi, a nutritionist at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, though he adds that spicy food may not be beneficial for those with digestive problems or stomach ulcers.

[More after the break...]

Phoenix666 writes:

Mummies aren't just Egyptian pharaohs or toilet paper-wrapped children on Halloween. The ancient British also practiced mummification, researchers say.

A significant amount of skeletons unearthed from the Bronze Age in Great Britain show strong evidence of mummification, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Antiquity.

Researchers compared ancient British skeletons with the bones of known mummies, including one from Ireland and one from Yemen. They found similarities indicating that some of the British bodies had been mummified too.

Original Submission

Yog-Yogguth writes:

EU Directive 2015/412 allows EU member governments "to restrict or prohibit the cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in their territory" and as part of the transitional measures of the directive member states could overrule and exclude themselves from any EU-approved GMO by notification before the 3rd of October 2015.

The following 19 (out of 28) have done so: Austria, Belgium for the Wallonia region, Britain for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany (except for research), Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Slovenia.

From the Greenpeace link further below:

Sources:

• Reuters "Majority of EU nations seek opt-out from growing GM crops"
• RT "Two thirds of EU states reject GMO crops, file cultivation opt-out requests"
• Deutsche Welle Europe's GMO compromise: bound to unravel? (discusses future developments in view of the news)
• Greenpeace "Distrust over EU GM crop approvals grows as at least 16 countries move towards national bans" (has a lot of additional information)

Original Submission

basstard writes:

Scientists have discovered a species of ancient mammal that survived the event that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The remains of this large, rodent-like creature give clues about how mammals "took over" when dinosaurs died out. Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, as the newly-discovered species has been named, was a plant-eating creature that resembled a beaver. The news is published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

Dr Stephen Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh, lead researcher on the study, explained how a student on his team called Carissa Raymond found the fossil while prospecting at a site in New Mexico, US. "We realised pretty quickly that this was a totally new type of mammal that no-one has seen before," he told BBC News. The researchers noticed in particular the animal's teeth, which were specialised for plant-chewing, with complicated rows of cusps at the back and incisors at the front for gnawing. They named the species after Kimbeto Wash, the area in the New Mexico badlands where it was found. "The other part of the name - psalis - means 'cutting shears' and is in reference to [the] blade-like teeth," Dr Brusatte explained.

This group of now-extinct mammals, collectively known as multituberculates, originated alongside the dinosaurs, during the Jurassic and thrived for more than 100 million years until they were apparently superseded by rodents.

"[During the Jurassic] these animals were all pretty small," said Dr Brusatte. "Then the asteroid hit, wiped out the dinosaurs and suddenly - in geological terms - this [group of animals] started to proliferate and get bigger. "That's how the rise of mammals started and really the end result of that is us being here today."

The scientists say that this, and other mammal discoveries from that "brave new world", paint a picture of how mammals made it through the extinction event. "A whole lot of mammals did die, but this group is one that made it through pretty well," Dr Brusatte explained. "Literally, the world changed one day. "That asteroid hit and suddenly the dinosaurs are wiped out. It looks like mammals were just waiting their turn and as soon as the dinosaurs disappeared, they thrived."

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Sprint's place among the big four US wireless carriers continues to be a precarious one, with news reports saying the company now aims to reduce its number of employees and cut between $2 billion and $2.5 billion in costs over the next six months.

A memo from Sprint management to staff said there will be a hiring freeze and "job reductions," according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sprint announced days ago that it will skip a major auction of low-band spectrum, a decision that could push the company further behind its rivals. Sprint has licenses to more spectrum than any other carrier, but AT&T and Verizon control a large majority of low-band spectrum, which is ideal for providing coverage over long distances and indoors. T-Mobile says it intends to buy enough low-band spectrum to cover the entire nation; Sprint says it can improve coverage with its existing spectrum by increasing the number of cell towers.

"Cutting $2.5 billion in costs is an ambitious target," the Journal wrote. "The company had $7.5 billion in operating expenses during the three months ended June 30. The company has said previously it cut $1.5 billion in expenses in the last 12 months... Sprint hasn't posted an annual profit since 2006. In the most recent quarter, it posted a $20 million loss and burned through $2.2 billion in cash."

What's the plan B for Sprint customers, which carrier will they jump to?

Original Submission

I'm just informed enough about IT security to know that I really know very very little about it. That said, I probably know ten times as much as do 99% of people. I'm an expert in my field, and while I've been a jack of all trades on many fronts, today's threats to privacy and IT security require expert knowledge to combat.

I do not have time.

• For example, I hear that Microsoft added updates to Win7/8 that threaten my family's privacy...yet I have not yet gone and removed the offending updates. I moved myself to Ubuntu/xfce, but my son is still using Win8. I'll get to it eventually.
• For example, java script is a security risk, and I have No-Script, turn off 3rd party cookies, etc, but invariably I have to turn it off for some website (i.e. to pay my bill), and eventually, I stop turning it back to full security.
• I installed Cyanogenmod and Fdroid on my phone. And for the most part its great..and I have very few apps with permissive permissions settings....but my wife is still using an iphone and ipad, with all sorts of apps...with ridiculous permission leaks..and that is a struggle.

The long winded point I have is that it is now just too damn much work to do it all right. I'm tired after a 10 hour workday. I've obviously taken more steps than most, but it is still leaky as hell...

I need a company/organization that I can reasonably trust to manage my information security/property, to manage my computers, manage my vpns, e.g., to isolate my web browser windows over multiple vpns, ... all of it, and it can't be GOOGLE. My data is my property, as long as I can hold it, so it needs to be a company/organization that built in privacy obligations (like lawyers and doctors supposedly do).

-Signed: A Frustrated Tired Old Nerd (with children)

[Ed's Comment: Does such a company exist? Is it even possible to provide such a service? Or have we just identified a niche in the market for some enterprising person to fill?]

Original Submission

martyb writes:

In research presented at the 2015 European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) researchers have found that automated and human verification for voice-based user authentication systems are vulnerable to voice impersonation attacks. Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., is the director of the Security and Privacy In Emerging computing and networking Systems (SPIES) lab and associate professor of computer and information sciences at UAB.

The researchers were able to fool automated systems 80%-90% of the time, and humans about 50% of the time. They warn that computer hardware and voice imitation software continue to improve while the human ability to distinguish real from imitation likely will not.

Using an off-the-shelf voice-morphing tool, the researchers developed a voice impersonation attack to attempt to penetrate automated and human verification systems.

[...] Advances in technology, specifically those that automate speech synthesis such as voice morphing, allow an attacker to build a very close model of a victim's voice from a limited number of samples. Voice morphing can be used to transform the attacker's voice to speak any arbitrary message in the victim's voice.

[...] Voice biometrics is based on the assumption that each person has a unique voice that depends not only on his or her physiological features of vocal cords but also on his or her entire body shape, and on the way sound is formed and articulated.

[More after the Break]

Yog-Yogguth writes:

Mitochondria are the organelles ("small organs") within almost all biological cells that provide energy to the cell (in the form of ATP) but they also have a number of other crucial functions and biological importance in relation to diseases and death.

The SENS Research Foundation (SRF) (Wikipedia link) co-founded by Aubrey de Grey (who also co-founded the Methuselah Foundation (Wikipedia link)) are ultimately looking for ways to defeat death, or less controversially stated "ending aging" or even less so "transform the way the world researches and treats age-related disease" and identified mitochondrial mutations as one of seven key types of cellular damage they wished to find strategies and cures against.

As part of this the SRF launched a crowdfunding campaign called the MitoSENS Mitochondrial Repair Project which has now surpassed its funding target. The aim of the project is to engineer replacements for mitochondrial genes from copies of the genome so that mitochondrial functions can restored when lost as happens during aging and mitochondrial diseases.

An excerpt from the MitoSENS funding page:

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Emily Badger and Christopher Ingraham report at the Washington Post that new research finds that improvements in road safety since the 1990s haven't been evenly shared with fatality rates actually increasing for people 25 and older with less than a high school diploma. In 1995, death rates — adjusted for age, sex and race — were about 2.5 times higher for people at the bottom of the education spectrum than those at the top. By 2010, death rates for the least educated were about 4.3 times higher than for the most educated.

According to Badger and Ingraham, the underlying issue is not that a college degree makes you a better driver. Rather, the least-educated tend to own cars that are older and have lower crash-test ratings and those with less education are likely to earn less and to have the money for fancy safety features such as side airbags, automatic warnings and rear cameras. Poor people are also more likely to live in areas where infrastructure is crumbling and have less political clout to get anything done about dangerous road conditions.

The role of behavioral differences is murkier. Some studies show lower seat-belt use among the less-educated, but seat-belt use has also increased faster among that group over time, meaning socioeconomic differences there are narrowing. Badger and Ingraham conclude that "as we increasingly fantasize about new technologies that will save us from our own driving errors — cars that will brake for us, or spot cyclists we can't see, or even take over all the navigation — we should anticipate that, at first, those benefits may mostly go to the rich."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A crystal radio set has no battery: its antenna collects radio waves as an alternating current, and its diode makes direct current which makes sound in an earphone.

Freevolt is a device which works on the same principle, turning radio frequencies such as those from mobile phone transmitters, TV broadcasts, or Wi-Fi into direct current. It can provide 100 µW of power, enough to operate a carbon monoxide detector. The maker is accepting pre-orders for a developer kit.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

New discoveries lead to new questions and hypotheses, but the existence of some things in the human body are hard to prove, Miller said. Here are four areas whose very existence in the body has been debated, along with the views expressed on both sides of the argument.

The G-spot

When women are surveyed, the majority of them say they believe the G-spot is real. But when doctors are asked about the existence of the Grafenberg spot, named for a German gynecologist who first described an erogenous zone on the anterior, or front, wall of the vagina that is linked with intense orgasms, there might be considerable debate on the subject.
...
Pheromones

Pheromones are chemical signals that animals release as a way to communicate with other members of the same species. Insects and other animals are known to secrete pheromones in their sweat, saliva or urine, and the animal that picks up on the compounds, often by smelling them, may get information, such as that a certain territory has been marked, that danger is nearby or that a potential mate is sexually available.
...
Irisin

The researchers suggested that irisin is a protein produced when a person exercises, and that the body may make more of it as physical activity continues, said Keith Baar, an associate professor of physiology at the University of California, Davis, who has studied exercise and irisin but was not involved in Spiegelman's research.
...
Cancer stem cells

Cancer stem cells are a big issue in cancer biology, Miller said. Normal stem cells are special cells that can give rise to other types of cells in the body, to make tissues and organs.

This has led scientists to theorize that, like normal tissue, cancer is also driven by stem cells.

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

AlterNet reports

This week it was announced that Oregon will be expunging the old records of marijuana offenders, along with their new legalization plan. This measure is the farthest that a state has gone to date in regards to applying the new laws to old cases. However, for people who remain in jail for having a plant, the legalization plan does not go far enough.

According to the New York Times (paywall), people who have low-level felony or misdemeanor marijuana charges on their record that are at least ten years old will be eligible for expungement.

While the transition in Oregon is nowhere near what is needed for the hundreds of thousands who are still incarcerated, the aspect that allows for old cases to be expunged is at least a step in the right direction, and is helping people clear their records so they can avoid discrimination.

"Oregon is one of the first states to really grapple with the issue of what do you do with a record of something that used to be a crime and no longer is", law professor Jenny M. Roberts told the New York Times.

Original Submission

tt0071360 writes:

Google's new advertising product, called Customer Match, lets advertisers upload their customer and promotional email address lists into AdWords. The new targeting capability extends beyond search to include both YouTube Trueview ads and the newly launched native ads in Gmail.

Customer Match marks the first time Google has allowed advertisers to target ads against customer-owned data in Adwords. Google matches the email addresses against those of signed-in users on Google. Individual addresses are hashed and are supposedly anonymized. Advertisers will be able to set bids and create ads specifically geared to audiences built from their email lists.

This new functionality seems to make de-anonymization of google's supposedly proprietary customer data just a hop, skip and jump away. If you can specify the list of addresses that get served an ad, and the criteria like what search terms will trigger that ad, you can detect if and when your target searches for specific terms. For example, create an email list that contains your target and 100 invalid email addresses that no one uses (just in case google gets wise to single-entry email lists). Then apply that list to searches for the word "herpes" - set the bid crazy high, like $100 and you are guaranteed to find out if your target searches for herpes which would be a strong indicator that they have herpes. Repeat as necessary for as many keywords and as many email addresses that you wish to monitor.

Original Submission