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Phoenix666 writes:

For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art - including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko - as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince - except that it acted secretly - the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.

The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art — President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex-communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.

Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Over the past year as the communications service Twitter has rolled out new features with the stated goal of stopping "abusive tweets", critics have expressed concerns that this technology may be used for political censorship. These concerns received broader attention last week when Cryptome published a report by Paul Dietrich alleging that Twitter had hidden information about leaked NSA papers from American users.

As alleged by Dietrich, Twitter will hide information from users for the critical period of the first 24 hours, when users are most likely to spread the information, before allowing the information to be seen again. The disappearance and reappearance of the information resembles a software glitch. Dietrich describes this mechanism as "Censorship that doesn't look like censorship... Subtle, deniable, and quite ruthless."

Concerns about the system were first raised in April by Twitter user Daddy Warpig who reported that Twitter was hiding all posts by certain users of the conservative #TCOT and liberal #Gamergate hashtags along with users affiliated with the Sad Puppies campaign of science-fiction authors protesting against a perceived bias in the Hugo Awards.

Twitter introduced a revised system in May, stating that it would hide only "tweets sent directly to an individual which are from a recently registered account and use language similar to previously flagged messages." Lizzy Finnegan, a writer for the Escapist, discovered that Twitter was hiding messages from established users who had previously used the #Gamergate hashtag but was not blocking new accounts created to test the system by sending the exact same messages.

[More after the break.]

Phoenix666 writes:

Twenty years ago today, an invisible object circling an obscure star in the constellation Pegasus overturned everything astronomers knew about planets around other stars. No, the fallout was even bigger than that. The indirect detection of 51 Pegasi b—the first planet ever found around a star similar to the sun—revealed that they had never really known anything to begin with.

At the time, even the most adventurous minds blithely assumed that our solar system was more or less typical, a template for all the others. 51 Peg b threw a big splash of reality in their faces. The newfound world was bizarre, a Jupiter-size world skimming the surface of its star in a blistering-fast "year" that lasted just 4.2 days. Its existence ran counter to the standard theories of how planets form and evolve. It answered one big question: Yes, other planetary systems really do exist. But it raised a thousand others.

How long before we discover signals from one of those planets, and what will it mean for our civilization?

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Phoenix666 writes:

In a new twist, a team of researchers from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the University of Texas at Austin has applied to acoustic waves the concept of "scattering cancellation," which has long been used to systematically cancel the dominant scattering modes of electromagnetic waves off objects.

The work provides fundamental new tools to control acoustic scattering and should improve the ability to make acoustic measurements in the laboratory. It is described this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing.

"Scattering" occurs when an object has material properties different than those of the medium surrounding it, such as air or water, and its "mode" is characterized by the way waves bounce off of it. By applying a coating with the appropriate material properties, electromagnetic scattering modes can be cancelled -- a process known as "scattering cancellation."

It turns out that this applies equally well to other types of waves, such as acoustic waves. As the team reports this week, the principles of scattering aren't limited to electromagnetic waves but are a fundamental feature of how any type of wave interacts with its environment.

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Phoenix666 writes:

South Korean organizations are being targeted in attacks with a new stealthy backdoor program that gives attackers full access to infected computers.

The malware has been dubbed Duuzer and while it's not exclusively used against targets in South Korea, it does seem that the hacker group behind it have a preference for that country's manufacturing industry, according to security firm Symantec.

Duuzer was designed to work on both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows versions and opens a back door through which attackers can gather system information; create, list and kill processes; access, modify and delete files; execute commands and more.

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"gewg_" writes:

AlterNet reports

A research team from the Institute of Bee Health at the University of Bern, from Agroscope at the Swiss Confederation, and from the Department of Biology at Canada's Acadia University [published the results of their study] in an article in the open-access journal Scientific Reports from the Nature Publishing Group [which concludes] that honey bee queens are "extremely vulnerable" to the neonicotinoids thiamethoxam and clothianidin.
[Reprinted in the journal Nature."]

The study shows profound effects on queen physiology, anatomy, and overall reproductive success.

[...] Previous research suggests that exposure to these chemicals [causes] both lethal and sub-lethal effects on honey bee workers, but nothing has been known about how they may affect queens.

The observation that honey bee queens are highly vulnerable to these common neonicotinoid pesticides is "worrisome, but not surprising", says senior author Laurent Gauthier from the Swiss Confederation's Agroscope.

[...] Since there is only a single queen in each colony, queen health is crucial to colony survival.

[...] In 2013, governments in Europe took a precautionary approach by partially restricting the application of the neonicotinoid pesticides thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and imidacloprid, with the mandate to perform further environmental risk assessments.

A new inter-governmental review will take place in the coming months.

Previous: Can Obama Save the Bees?
EPA Finds Little Benefit to Pesticide Linked to Bee Declines

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takyon writes:

A group of scientists have written into the journals Science and Nature , calling for the creation of U.S. and international microbiome initiatives similar in scale to the Human Brain Project:

The White House is already considering increasing its support of research into the workings of these microbial communities, called microbiomes. The new papers "are very thoughtful and have a lot to tell us," said Jo Handelsman, the associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and herself a microbiologist. As to whether there will be a national microbiome initiative, she said, "We don't have anything to announce today."

Microbiomes have become the focus of intense study and public interest. The trillions of microbes that live inside the human body, for example, play important roles in health, from fighting diseases to maintaining a balanced immune system.

[...] As yet, there are few examples of successful manipulation of microbiomes. The best documented is a medical procedure known as fecal transplant. Patients with life-threatening gut infections can be cured by receiving intestinal bacteria from a healthy donor. Yet scientists are still at a loss to explain how individual species of bacteria in such a transplant help battle infections. A fuller understanding might open the way to using microbiome-based treatments for other ailments, from tooth decay to obesity.

Dr. Miller said it might also be possible to tend to microbiomes outside our bodies. Manipulating microbes in farm fields could increase the productivity of crops, for example. The tundra, too, contains vast amounts of methane-generating microbes that could accelerate global warming. Understanding how that microbiome works might lead to ways to control its effects on the climate.

[More after the break.]

Phoenix666 writes:

Commercial drones are starting to be used for tasks like inspecting oil rigs and crops. But they still require a highly skilled human pilot, and even those that are semi-autonomous usually use prebuilt maps or access the data over a wireless link.

Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich are making drones more independent. They have demonstrated a small drone that can build its own 3-D map of an unfamiliar environment with minimal help from a human operator, and then plan its own routes around a space and its obstacles autonomously.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Microsoft has announced (non-Javascript version) (emphasis in original) that

As of November 15, 2015, Zune services will be retired. You will no longer be able to stream or download content to your device from the Zune music service. However, Zune devices will still function as music players and any MP3 content that you own on the Zune device will remain there. You'll also be able to transfer music to and from your Zune player.

Note Content that was purchased with DRM may not play if the license can't be renewed.

Existing Zune Music Pass subscriptions will be converted to Groove Music Pass subscriptions.

Analysis:

• Wired
• Engadget

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Phoenix666 writes:

Findings from a new study challenge the notion that older adults always lag behind their younger counterparts when it comes to learning new things. The study, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, shows that older adults were actually better than young adults at correcting their mistakes on a general information quiz.

"The take home message is that there are some things that older adults can learn extremely well, even better than young adults. Correcting their factual errors--all of their errors--is one of them," say psychological scientists Janet Metcalfe and David Friedman of Columbia University, who conducted the study. "There is such a negative stereotype about older adults' cognitive abilities but our findings indicate that reality may not be as bleak as the stereotype implies."

Metcalfe, Friedman, and colleagues were interested in exploring a phenomenon known as the "hypercorrection effect." According to the effect, when people are very confident about an answer that turns out to be wrong, they tend to correct it; when they're initially unsure about the answer, however, they're less likely to correct it. Previous research has shown that the effect is robust in college students and children, but not as strong in older adults.

Old dogs still have some bite.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Ben Funk over on TechReport has linked to a Terry Myerson blog post where he states that in early 2016, the "Windows 10 Upgrade" update will be changed in status from "Optional" to "Recommended". Therefore, if you haven't changed your Windows 7 system from automatically installing updates to manually notifying, but not installing, now is a good time to make that change, and audit every single "patch" you see. There have already been reports of users unknowingly experiencing ISP bandwidth overages due to downloading a massive 3 GB file due to the "Optional" update that was not requested, but Microsoft seems to be throwing caution to the winds.

In the blog post, Myerson has this statement: "Depending upon your Windows Update settings, this may cause the upgrade process to automatically initiate on your device. Before the upgrade changes the OS of your device, you will be clearly prompted to choose whether or not to continue. And of course, if you choose to upgrade (our recommendation!), then you will have 31 days to roll back to your previous Windows version if you don't love it." Historically, Windows has been far cleaner to install on a blank disk than to upgrade in place, so this sounds like a recipe for many support calls. There also seems to be no backtracking on any of the privacy concerns, or perhaps taking the "zero telemetry, selective update install" functionality promised (but not yet delivered) to Enterprise customers, and extending it to consumer licensees who value their privacy.

Tip of the hat to darkfeline who sent in a link to coverage on Ars Technica

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Phoenix666 writes:

The guidelines of the competition are simple: use an arduino or Raspberry Pi and make something cool. After seeing the new Star Wars trailer my team decide the new robot, BB-8 (shown below), was the perfect fit. What could be cooler than pumpkin carving, Star Wars, and robots all combined?

The idea was simple. A stepper motor with a belt would connect to the central shaft and rotate it. This way we could have a large enough dowel to support a pumpkin, and we could still use a normal motor.

From there, the motor would connect to a h-bridge that was driven by a Raspberry Pi. Instead of the Pi controlling the robot completely, we set up a simple Apache webserver to call specific scripts when URLs were hit. We didn't want to just stop there! Arnaud kept going with that idea, and set up an app that would call the endpoints! Long story short, this means that we had a native iOS app that allowed anyone to control the robot pumpkin!*

Any Soylentils doing fun Halloween projects with Arduinos or RPi's?

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Royal Dutch Shell announced its third-quarter earnings of $1.8 billion. The figure includes $2 billion in losses because of the company's decision, announced at the same time, to stop construction of its Carmon Creek tar sands plant, near the town of Peace River, Alberta. It cited inadequate pipeline capacity as the reason for the stoppage. The facility was designed to extract 80,000 barrels of oil per day. The company is retaining its lease and hence the ability to resume construction. The company also announced a $2.6 billion write-off resulting from its activities, now ended, off the Alaskan coast (earlier story).

Coverage:

• Shell Web site
• Washington Post
• CBC
• Wall Street Journal
• The Guardian
• Washington Examiner

The announcement comes shortly after the release of a white paper, "Lockdown: the End of Growth in the Tar Sands", by Oil Change International, a group critical of the oil industry. However, the Conference Board of Canada recently predicted (summary) that "Canadian crude oil production is expected to expand significantly over the medium term."

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Phoenix666 writes:

It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career.

What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a "deep" 31-stage pipeline?

Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside.

As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it?

A primer for those with a less formal background.

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Phoenix666 writes:

America, your military fails at security. That's the message from Netcraft security expert Paul Mutton, who has found a bunch of Department of Defence (DoD) agencies issuing SHA-1 certificates.

SHA-1 is almost as old as the art of war: created in 1995, it was secure then, but now, you only need US$75,000 to buy enough cloud CPU to can[sic] crack an SHA-1 signature.

Netcraft is waging war on the stubborn protocol, and earlier this month warned that there's still a quarter of a million SHA-1 certs with expiry dates of 2017 or later.

The use of those certs in dot-mil domains, however, singles it out for special criticism, since the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has long told US government agencies that SHA-1 is no longer acceptable.

Perhaps the NSA could help the military secure its systems.

[The story in The Register seems to be based on this Netcraft blog post which contains considerably more details about these security shortcomings. -Ed.]

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takyon writes:

A decision by the IETF means that compliant browsers and software should keep requests for Tor .onion domains off the public Internet:

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the body that sets standards for the Internet, has formally recognized .onion names. We think that this is a small and important landmark in the movement to build privacy into the structure of the Internet. This standardization work for .onion is joint work between Facebook and the Tor Project amongst others in an effort to help secure users everywhere.

[...] During our long journey which began in the Summer of Snowden, Alec Muffett and I were encouraged to split out .onion from the list of other peer to peer names and to make a separate draft to register .onion as a Special-Use Domain Name. In this draft we listed security and privacy considerations that we believe will help to protect end users from targeted and mass-surveillance. We're happy to say that the first name reservation was just published as RFC7686.

Our internet standard reflects on considerations for handling .onion names on the internet as well as officially reserving .onion as a Special-Use-Domain-Name with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). With this registration, it is should also be possible to buy Extended Validation (EV) SSL/TLS certificates for .onion services thanks to a recent decision by the Certification Authority Browser Forum. We hope that in the future we'll see easy to issue certificates from the Let's Encrypt project for .onion services. We also hope to see more Peer to Peer names such as .gnu registered as Special-Use-Domain-Names by the IETF.

It is now easier than ever to deploy, share and use Tor Hidden Services.

Via The Register .

[SoylentNews is available on .tor — see the sidebox "Navigation" and click on About. - Ed.]

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