SoylentNews

Phoenix666 writes:

Early life stress is a major risk factor for later episodes of depression. In fact, adults who are abused or neglected as children are almost twice as likely to experience depression.

Scientific research into this link has revealed that the increased risk following such childhood adversity is associated with sensitization of the brain circuits involved with processing threat and driving the stress response. More recently, research has begun to demonstrate that in parallel to this stress sensitization, there may also be diminished processing of reward in the brain and associated reductions in a person's ability to experience positive emotions.

Researchers at Duke University and the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio looked specifically at this second phenomenon in a longitudinal neuroimaging study of adolescents, in order to better understand how early life stress contributes to depression.

They recruited 106 adolescents, between the ages of 11-15, who underwent an initial magnetic resonance imaging scan, along with measurements of mood and neglect. The study participants then had a second brain scan two years later.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

With Google Scholar, PubMed, and other free academic databases at their fingertips, scientists may feel they have plenty of resources to trawl through the ever-growing science literature.

But a search engine unveiled on 2 November by the non-profit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) in Seattle, Washington, is working towards providing something different for its users: an understanding of a paper's content. "We're trying to get deep into the papers and be fast and clean and usable," says Oren Etzioni, chief executive officer of AI2.

The free product, called Semantic Scholar, is currently limited to searching about 3 million open-access papers in computer science. But the AI2 team aims to broaden that to other fields within a year, Etzioni says. His team is well financed: AI2 was founded and is backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who has given the institute more than US$20 million since 2013.

Semantic Scholar offers a few innovative features, including picking out the most important keywords and phrases from the text without relying on an author or publisher to key them in.

http://www.nature.com/news/artificial-intelligence-institute-launches-free-science-search-engine-1.18703

Original Submission

A recent study by NASA seems to contradict some of the currently accepted knowledge about global warming and glaciers. It found that increased ice melting in Antarctica is offset by increased snowfall, meaning that the continent's glaciers are posting a net gain in mass, and are not contributing to rising sea levels.

Contrary to some sensationalist headlines about the "end of global warming", the study's authors urged caution.

Editors Note: As best as I can tell, this is the NASA study referenced in the article above. Note that it is from October, 2014.

Original Submission

VLM writes:

Cut and pasted shamelessly from StarTrek.com:

"CBS Television Studios announced today it will launch a totally new Star Trek television series in January 2017."

"The brand-new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966."

"The new television series is not related to the upcoming feature film Star Trek Beyond which is scheduled to be distributed by Paramount Pictures in summer 2016."

Original Submission

hubie writes:

Back in June Glowforge touted itself as the Next Big Thing in 3D printing after raising $9M in series A venture money. They announced a laser cutting machine marketed for the home market, which would consist of a device about the size of a laser printer that would precision cut materials such as paper and leather, and said it would cost under $2,500. At the time of their first announcement they didn't look like they had anything more than an idea and a good sales pitch, but they've now announced that they've raised $28M in crowdsource money, which works out to something like 6000 units. They said they will start sending them out in December.

Original Submission

CoolHand writes:

It looks like Microsoft hasn't reformed as some would like to think, but has moved its embrace, extend, extinguish policy to the mobile platform. In this article from techrights.org , we see a company (responsible for Mono) with strong MS connections take over an open source project and close it.

LAST WEEK we wrote about Xamarin's disturbing takeover of RoboVM [1, 2], which was a threat to Microsoft's monopoly and domination of APIs (especially on the desktop). Xamarin, for the uninitiated, creates proprietary software that strives to spread Microsoft's .NET to mobile (including Android) devices.

It has only been less than a week and now we learn from Abel Avram that "RoboVM Is No Longer Open Source".

"Following RoboVM's acquisition by Xamarin," explains Avram, "the company has raised the price of their offering and has closed the source code."

Discussion of a fork is in the works:

It has gotten so bad that RoboVM might be forked. To quote Avram, "some developers consider that closing down the source code has to do with Xamarin's acquisition. And some are discussing forking the project, perhaps starting with the sources v. 1.8 which will be pushed to GitHub this week, according to Zechner. It remains to see how successful they are in their endeavor considering that RoboVM is not a trivial piece of software."

Original Submission

ticho writes:

The first plane produced by a Chinese government initiative to compete in the market for large passenger jetliners has been unveiled in Shanghai.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) showed off its twin-engine C919 in a ceremony on Monday attended by some 4,000 government officials and other guests at a hangar near the Pudong International Airport.

For China, the plane represents at least seven years of efforts in a state-mandated drive to reduce dependence on European consortium Airbus and Boeing of the United States, and even compete against them.

"China's air transport industry cannot completely rely on imports. A great nation must have its own large commercial aircraft," the country's civil aviation chief Li Jiaxiang told an audience of government and industry officials.

Original Submission

Walzmyn writes:

So it's happened; mom's venerable Dell has bit the dust and I'm being called on to find her a new laptop. Everything I've seen here and elsewhere says Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare and we're trusting Microsoft's forced automatic updates to not break the computer. Dell is still offering computers with Win 7 and 8.1, but Microsoft is pushing the OS upgrade hard and heavy. I'd love for her to let me set her up with Linux but she's devoted to Google Picasa (Google not porting their apps is another rant) and I'm not sure how often she's going to be calling me with some Windows only program she needs. And then there's Apple, which makes my fingers itch to type, but it's looking better and better. So, what is the collective wisdom of the Soylentils*?

1. Is windows 10 really not that bad and just roll with it.
2. Is Linux finally ready for Grandma?
3. Stick with 8.1 and turn off all the updates?
4. Shell out the cash for a Macbook?

*Irony duly noted.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Google is testing its DoubleClick ad tech on a new type of screen — the digital billboard or as the ad industry calls it, Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH) Media.

The trial began in the UK in October and should run for a short while longer, according the Business Insider, which broke the news. The BI says Google doesn't have plans to launch anything larger than this initial run, which is testing how premium billboard ads can be bought programmatically via DoubleClick.
...
Google is well poised to dominate this sector thanks to DoubleClick's wide use throughout the ad industry.

Grabbing a piece of the DOOH pie would also address — at least partially, at least in the minds of inquiring analysts and shareholders — how it is shoring its ad revenues up against ad blockers and digital fraud, both of which have been highlighted a great deal recently in media.

In some places billboards are shot full of holes.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Owners of home photovoltaic systems will soon be able to make their households even more sustainable, because PV power is also suitable for charging personal electronic vehicles. A home energy management system created by Fraunhofer researchers incorporates electric vehicles into the household energy network and creates charging itineraries.

The house of the future is environmentally friendly, energy efficient and smart. Its inhabitants can utilize rooftop-generated PV energy not only for household consumption but also to charge their personal electric vehicle. This scenario has already become reality for a collection of row houses built according to the "Passive House" standard in the German city of Fellbach in Baden-Württemberg. The group of new homes was upgraded as part of the "Fellbach ZeroPlus" project to include electromobility enhancements as well as a comprehensive energy management system. The initiative is sponsored by the German Federal Government's "Electric Mobility Showcase" program.

A couple Soylentils have done something like this, so perhaps this would be of interest to others who are considering doing likewise.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

In the thirteenth century, before the rise of the "modern" state, private enforcement mechanisms reigned supreme. In fact, because monarchs of the time had difficulties enforcing laws within their jurisdictions, the practice of private individuals enforcing their rights was so widespread that for the sovereign to be able to "reign supreme" while his subjects simultaneously acted as judge, jury and executioner, the practice of issuing "letters of marque and reprisal" arose. Merchants traveling from town to town or even on the high seas often became the victims of pirates, brigands and thieves. Yet these merchants had no means of redress, especially when they were outside the jurisdiction of their states. Thus the victim of a robbery often sought to take back some measure of what was lost, usually in like property or in proportionate value.
...
One might ask at this point, what do letters of marque and reprisal have to do with cybersecurity? A lot, I think [says Heather Roff]. Recently, the Washington Post reported that there is increasing interest in condoning "hacking back" against cyber attackers. Hacking back, or "active defense," is basically attempting to trace the origins of an attack, and then gain access to that network or system. With all of the growing concern about the massive amounts of data stolen from the likes of Microsoft, Target, Home Depot, JPMorgan Chase and nameless others, the ability to "hack back" and potentially do malicious harm to those responsible for data theft appears attractive. Indeed Patrick Lin argues we ought to consider a cyber version of "stand your ground" where an individual is authorized to defend her network, data or computer. Lin also thinks that such a law may reduce the likelihood of cyberwar because one would not need to engage or even to consult with the state, thereby implicating it in "war crimes." As Lin states "a key virtue of "Stand Your Cyberground" is that it avoids the unsolved and paralyzing question of what a state's response can be, legally and ethically, against foreign-based attacks."

Letters of Marque were a way for a state to give cover of law to activity it could not control. Are Cyber-Privateers a good thing?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Today at the Chaos Computer Congress (30C3), xobs and I disclosed a finding that some SD cards contain vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution — on the memory card itself. On the dark side, code execution on the memory card enables a class of MITM (man-in-the-middle) attacks, where the card seems to be behaving one way, but in fact it does something else. On the light side, it also enables the possibility for hardware enthusiasts to gain access to a very cheap and ubiquitous source of microcontrollers.
...
In our talk at 30C3, we report our findings exploring a particular microcontroller brand, namely, Appotech and its AX211 and AX215 offerings. We discover a simple "knock" sequence transmitted over manufacturer-reserved commands (namely, CMD63 followed by 'A','P','P','O') that drop the controller into a firmware loading mode. At this point, the card will accept the next 512 bytes and run it as code.

From this beachhead, we were able to reverse engineer (via a combination of code analysis and fuzzing) most of the 8051's function specific registers, enabling us to develop novel applications for the controller, without any access to the manufacturer's proprietary documentation. Most of this work was done using our open source hardware platform, Novena, and a set of custom flex circuit adapter cards (which, tangentially, lead toward the development of flexible circuit stickers aka chibitronics).

Some interesting information on the inner workings flash memory and how to exploit it for sneaky and benign DIY purposes.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Today, thanks to political gridlock in the U.S., lawmakers respond to innovations with all the speed of continental drift. As government gets slower, tech is going the opposite way. New technologies spread instantly by cloud-based apps and social networks, and take hold with almost no legal oversight. Then, by the time government can act, it's usually too late to wind things back to the way they were.

And this, as it turns out, is terrific for tech startups, especially those aimed at demolishing creaky old norms—like taxis, or flight paths over crowded airspace, or money. Lately, the law vs. tech gap is making headlines as it upends the rules around sports gambling. The daily fantasy sports sites FanDuel and DraftKings are showing how fast technology can exploit the gap and put government on its heels.

This problem is as old as law itself. From thrown rocks to spears, bow and arrow to guns, agricultural to industrial economies, government has always had this problem.

Original Submission

"gewg_" writes:

El Reg reports

Rupert Murdoch's flagship British tabloid, The Sun, is to abandon its paywall in search of greater web traffic as it seeks to compete with big online news hitters such as the Daily Mail.

[...] News UK's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, said in a company-wide email: "I recently shared with you the future priorities for the company and am excited today to tell you more about our plans for the first of these: growing The Sun's audience. This will mean setting The Sun predominantly free in the digital world from November 30. By happy coincidence, this is also Cyber Monday, one of the best-performing days of the year for online retail."

[...] Fans of the racy Page 3 feature will probably be disappointed to learn that Lucy from Daventry and her skimpily clad pals will be placed on an entirely separate website.[1] In the interests of accurate reporting, your correspondent visited said website and can confirm that, at the time of writing, you still have to hand over your hard-earned beer tokens to see something you can easily get with 10 seconds spent on Google image search.

[1] Content is behind scripts.

Original Submission

darkfeline writes:

From ArsTechnica:

Federal prosecutors have said that they are moving forward in their attempt to compel Apple to unlock a seized iPhone 5S running iOS 7, even after the defendant in a felony drug case has now pleaded guilty.

The judge in the case, United States Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, said in a Friday court filing that he is confused.

...

If Feng's phone had iOS 8 or later installed—as 90 percent of iPhones do—this entire issue would likely be moot, as Apple now enables full encryption by default. In September 2014, Apple specifically said the move happened "so it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."

Citing an 18th-century law known as the All Writs Act, federal prosecutors had gone to the judge, asking him to force Apple to unlock the phone. At its core, this federal law simply allows courts to issue a writ, or order, which compels a person or company to do something.

In the past, feds have used this law to compel unnamed smartphone manufacturers to bypass security measures for phones involved in legal cases. The government has previously tried using this same legal justification against Apple as well.

However, for the first time, the judge invited Apple into the courtroom to present arguments as to why the judge should not order it to comply. Apple has made a compelling argument as to why it should not be forced to do the government's bidding.

"The government's proffered reading of the All Writs Act, if carried to its logical conclusion, leads to disquieting results," Ken Dreifach, an attorney representing Apple, wrote in his reply to the government earlier this month.

"For example, if the government wanted to crack a safe, it could require the safe's manufacturer to take possession of, or even travel to the location of, that safe and open it," he continued. "If the government wanted to examine a car, it could send the car to the manufacturer and require the manufacturer to perform the examination. The government could seemingly co-opt any private company it wanted to provide services in support of law enforcement activity, as long as the underlying activity was authorized by a warrant. The All Writs Act does not confer such limitless authority."

Original Submission