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"exec" (submitted from IRC) writes:

Linux Foundation chief spins to justify keeping community out

Linux Foundation chief executive Jim Zemlin has made a disappointing response to the reports about changes in the by-laws of the Foundation designed to prevent community representation. Confronted by facts that show clearly that the Foundation has made changes to block out the community, Zemlin [has] tried to spin and talked about irrelevant aspects of the debate around the issue. iTWire could not have made it more plain when pointing out the changes in the by-laws; they were marked in bold. Zemlin ignored everything and instead created a few straw men and then addressed them.

His statement began with a straw man: "The same individuals remain as directors, and the same ratio of corporate to community directors continues as well." Nobody has said anything about a change of directors, but the latter part of Zemlin's statement is just plain wrong. How can the ratio be the same when the community was earlier allowed to have two directors and now cannot have any? Zemlin then went on to claim that the Linux Foundation's move is in keeping with other FOSS organisations that are also cutting down on community representation. This again is incorrect, another straw man. Would he care to name the organisations he claims to be trying to emulate?

The major part of his statement talks about the abuse directed at Karen Sandler, the head of the Software Freedom Conservancy. Zemlin's changing of the by-laws was widely seen as a move to keep Sandler off the board as she is a passionate supporter of the GPL. The Conservancy is funding a GPL enforcement action against VMWare, a silver member of the Linux Foundation, and this is seen as a major reason why Zemlin has concluded that the fewer community members on the board the better.

In discussions around the web, there has been mention of the way the GNOME Foundation ran low on funds when Sandler was its head. Some claim that this was because more money was diverted to the outreach programme for women. Sandler has earned some flak for this. And so Zemlin became a knight in shining armour to defend what he characterised as a damsel in distress. Wow, he really went heavy on this.

The fact that most of the code for the kernel comes from developers employed by this company or that appears to have turned Zemlin's head and made him determined to ensure that only non-controversial people occupy the decision-making spots on the Foundation.

This is the relevant blog post by Linux Foundation chief Jim Zemlin responding to the controversy.

Previously: Linux Foundation No Longer Allows Little Guys in on the Election of Directors

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued a travel alert for 14 nations affected by the mosquito-borne Zika virus. One of those nations, El Salvador, is recommending against pregnancy due to a risk of birth defects suspected to be caused by the virus:

The entire region has erupted with concern over the virus, and each country has taken measures to combat its spread. Other Latin American countries, such as Colombia and Ecuador, as well as Jamaica in the Caribbean, have recommended delaying pregnancies, though not for an entire two years.

The rest of Latin America has responded with different tactics, ranging from widespread fumigation efforts to directing citizens not to be bitten by the Aedes mosquito, which is known to carry yellow, chikungunya and dengue fevers.

So far, the hardest hit nation in the region has been Brazil, where more than a million cases have been confirmed, including nearly 4,000 cases of microcephaly in newborns that could be linked to Zika. Microcephaly is a rare, incurable condition in which an infant's head is abnormally small.

Brazil has announced its plans to control the Zika virus while continuing to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro:

Inspections of Olympic facilities will begin four months before the Games to get rid of mosquito breeding grounds. Daily sweeps will also take place during the Games. But fumigation would only be an option on a case-by-case basis because of concerns for the health of the athletes and visitors.

The Brazilian health ministry says it is also banking on the fact that the Games are taking place in the cooler, drier month of August when mosquitoes are far less evident and there are considerably fewer cases of mosquito-borne viruses.

The World Health Organization warns that Zika is likely to spread across all of the Americas.

Related: Genetically-Modified Mosquito Company Expands Operations

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Video game live streaming service Twitch has banned the streaming of Yandere Simulator, a game currently being created by a lone developer with a significant following on YouTube. It is currently unclear why the game is banned when raunchier titles like Grand Theft Auto V are safe to stream:

Just a few weeks ago we ran a story about Yandere Simulator, a game that revolves around a Japanese schoolgirl who murders anyone who gets between her and her high school crush. "Murder," though, is only part of it. As we related then, it also lets you gain the trust of people you encounter, which you can then use to lure them back to locked rooms where you torture them psychologically before sending them out to kill your rivals and then themselves.

Twitch, the video game streaming giant, apparently has a problem with this. As of late last week, anyone who broadcasts Yandere Simulator on Twitch will have their accounts banned. It's a distinction the PC game now shares with only 25 other titles, which have decidedly ban-bait names like Battle Rape and RapeLay. (Second Life makes the list as well because cocks can happen at any moment.) Twitch so far hasn't said exactly why it banned Yandere Simulator, though, and the company hasn't responded to a request for more information.

[Continues.]

takyon writes:

Samsung will open a studio dedicated to creating content for virtual reality devices:

Lights, camera, Samsung! The company behind the Gear VR virtual reality headset is opening a New York studio to produce new immersive experiences. Samsung announced the news here at the Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah, where virtual reality is emerging as a prominent theme.

[...] Festival-goers thronged Samsung's showcase during the day, with queues forming to try the Gear VR headset. Friday also saw the premiere of a new virtual-reality sketch from comedy website Funny or Die starring Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer of TV's "The League" and "Childrens Hospital". The comedians then enthused about VR at a boisterous panel discussing the making of the sketch, during which Huebel described VR as "the most fun way to blow people's minds." If people are really going to embrace virtual reality, they need stuff to actually watch on their headsets. Last year's Sundance saw the Facebook-owned Oculus VR company announce an initiative to create more content, and this year Oculus has recruited actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt to help promote its wares.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scotland may mandate adding folic acid to flour in order to reduce birth defects, a change that would likely end up affecting bakeries across the entire United Kingdom:

Scotland is considering whether to add folic acid to flour as concern mounts that there could be an increase in birth defects while the Westminster government delays a decision. Any move by Scotland could lead to folic acid being added to flour-based products UK-wide, as this would be the easiest solution for commercial bakers.

Folic acid plays a crucial role in preventing neural tube defects such as spina bifida. But 85% of women don't take enough.

Government advisers have recommended adding folic acid to flour for 16 years but the Department of Health says it is still "considering the matter". In the meantime, some food manufacturers have reduced the amount of folic acid they add to other foods, such as cereals, in anticipation of the fortification of flour. Experts say that this means children are at higher risk of birth defects.

The Scottish government says it would have preferred a UK-wide approach but has grown increasingly frustrated with the lack of progress. It is particularly concerned as unplanned pregnancies are more common in deprived communities. Public Health Minister Maureen Watt said: "The Scottish government has been convinced of the case for mandatory fortification for some time. Folate levels are a concern across the UK, but particularly so in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We are disappointed that, despite repeated lobbying from a number of sources, there has been no progress at UK level on mandatory fortification of flour with folic acid.

Here's an editorial in favor of fortifying flour.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

A disturbing trend in the coding world is looking to claim yet another victim. This time it's the Ruby language:

I am the creator of the Contributor Covenant, a code of conduct for Open Source projects. At last count there are over 13,000 projects on Github that have adopted it. This past year saw adoption of Contributor Covenant by a lot of very large, very visible projects, including Rails, Github's Atom text editor, Angular JS, bundler, curl, diaspora, discourse, Eclipse, rspec, shoes, and rvm. The bundler team made code of conduct integration an option in the gem creation workflow, putting it on par with license selection. Many open source language communities have already adopted the code of conduct, including Elixir, Mono, the .NET foundation, F#, and Apple's Swift. RubyTogether also adopted a policy to only fund Ruby projects that had a solid code of conduct in place.

Right now in the PHP community there is a healthy debate about adopting the Contributor Covenant. Since it came from and has been so widely adopted by the Ruby community at large, I think it's time that we consider adopting it for the core Ruby language as well.

Our community prides itself on niceness. What a code of conduct does is define what we mean by nice. It states clearly that we value openness, courtesy, and compassion. That we care about and want contributions from people who may be different from us. That we pledge to respect all contributors regardless of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other factors. And it makes it clear that we are prepared to follow through on these values with action when and if an incident arises.

I'm asking that we join with the larger Ruby community in supporting the adoption of the Contributor Covenant for the Ruby language. I think that this will be an important step forward and will ensure the continued welcoming and supportive environment around Ruby. You can read the full text of the Contributor Covenant at http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/3/0/ and learn more at http://contributor-covenant.org/.

Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

[Ed Note: Rest assured we already have this situation firmly resolved here at SN. Our official response to those who would propose a code of conduct boils down to a very firm "No". If you'd like the unvarnished version, please feel free to ask on IRC.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Microsoft's Skype service will now hide the IP addresses of users by default:

The Microsoft-owned chat service recently introduced the ability to hide your IP address, but has now enabled this setting by default in the latest version of its desktop and mobile apps.

"This measure will help prevent individuals from obtaining a Skype ID and resolving to an IP address," the Skype team wrote in a blog post. As Engadget noted, the move is intended to prevent online harassment in the gaming community, specifically.

Talk of this issue dates back to at least 2011, when researchers from the Polytechnic Institute of New York University warned that it's possible to leverage a service like Skype to track a person's whereabouts. "Specifically, if Alice knows Bob's VoIP ID, she can establish a call with Bob and obtain his current IP address by simply sniffing the datagrams arriving to her computer," the researchers said.

The following year, a Pastebin user posted instructions on how to exploit a flaw in the Skype network to determine another user's IP address. At the time, Skype called the problem an "industry-wide issue faced by all peer-to-peer software companies."

From the Engadget link:

Losing a multiplayer game leaves some people so angry that they'll go out of their way to force fellow players offline. In order to do this, gamers can use tools to locate a target's IP address from just their target's Skype username and then launch a DDoS attack to overload their internet connection.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Following a recent attempt in New York to legislate backdoors or ban encrypted devices, a California lawmaker is trying to do the same. Only this time, the boogeyman is human trafficking:

A second state lawmaker has now introduced a bill that would prohibit the sale of smartphones with unbreakable encryption. Except this time, despite very similar language to a pending New York bill, the stated rationale is to fight human trafficking, rather than terrorism.

Specifically, California Assemblymember Jim Cooper's (D-Elk Grove) new bill, which was introduced Wednesday, would "require a smartphone that is manufactured on or after January 1, 2017, and sold in California, to be capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider."

If the bill passes both the Assembly and State Senate and is signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown (D), it would affect modern iOS and Android devices, which enable full-disk encryption that neither Apple nor Google can access. AB 1681's language is nearly identical to another bill re-introduced in New York state earlier this month, but Cooper denied that it was based on any model legislation, saying simply that it was researched by his staff. He also noted that the sale of his own iPhone would be made illegal in California under this bill.

Cooper himself, a 30 year veteran with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, told Ars that allowing local law enforcement to access unencrypted phones through the warrant process was not the same thing as allowing the National Security Agency or the CIA free rein. He also noted that "99 percent" of Californians would never have their phones be implicated in a law enforcement operation, implying that they should not have to worry.

Engadget puts it best: "The bill would put every Californian's digital security at risk to prosecute a few pimps."

In other Crypto War news, NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers recently said that "encryption is foundational to the future," staking an opposite position from that of FBI Director James Comey.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Eight employees from the Egyptian Museum in Cairo are being prosecuted over the accidental detachment of the beard portion of Tutankhamun's iconic burial mask, as well as the subsequent cover-up:

It comes a year after officials opened an investigation into how the blue and gold braided beard came to be detached and then hastily glued back on. The accused face charges of negligence and violating professional standards. The 3,000-year-old artefact is one of Cairo's biggest tourist attractions.

Conservators at the Egyptian Museum had given differing accounts of the circumstances of the beard becoming detached. One suggestion was that it had been knocked off accidentally, another that it had been removed after becoming loose.

Prosecutors said workers then "recklessly" tried to cover up the mistake, using large amounts of inappropriate glue in an effort to fix it. In all, they made four attempts to reattach the beard, on the later three occasions also trying to remove evidence of their earlier failed efforts.

One report, in the Daily News Egypt, quoted prosecutors as saying: "Ignoring all scientific methods of restoration, the suspects tried to conceal their crime by using sharp metal tools to remove parts of the glue that became visible, thus damaging the 3,000-year-old piece without a moment of conscience."

Those due to face trial include a former director of the museum and a former director of restoration.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

"This is a serious threat to our national security. I mean, our economy depends on the ability to innovate. And if there's a dedicated nation state who's using its intelligence apparatus to steal day in and day out what we're trying to develop, that poses a serious threat to our country," [John Carlin, assistant attorney general for US National Security] told 60 Minutes.

One company cited in the report to suffer from the hands of Chinese espionage is American Superconductor, a software developer for wind turbines. The company once was turning over almost half a billion a year but almost went out of business after entering a contract with a government-owned Chinese wind turbine manufacturer, Sinovel.

Owner of American Superconductor, Daniel McGahn, discovered a version of its latest, unreleased software being used on a turbine in China. Despite doing everything possible to keep its source code off the internet it was discovered that the Chinese company turned one of McGahn's employees by offering him money, women and an apartment in return for the full operating code.

To make matters worse, when McGahn decided to sue Sinovel for $1.2bn (£840m) and hire a computer security firm to investigate the case, his firm claims the Chinese company hacked the company's system to see what course of legal action it was taking in order to get a leg-up in proceedings.

"Whenever there's a big lawsuit we'll see the Chinese government actually break into that company, break into the legal department and figure out what's going on behind the scenes so they can better deal with that lawsuit," said George Kurtz, co-founder of computer security company CrowdStrike.

Source: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/chinas-great-brain-robbery-hacking-us-companies-national-security-emergency-1538590

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Blue Origin is now the first company to launch a rocket above the Karman line, land it safely, then relaunch it a second time. According to this blog post on Blue Origin's web site, the New Shepard booster that was used in the November 2015 launch was reused for a new launch on January 22, 2016. The blog post has some interesting information about the reuse and some of the adjustments they have made to the return and landing algorithms.

The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.

Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today's re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one. Rather than the vehicle translating to land at the exact center of the pad, it now initially targets the center, but then sets down at a position of convenience on the pad, prioritizing vehicle attitude ahead of precise lateral positioning. It's like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don't swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline. Our Monte Carlo sims of New Shepard landings show this new strategy increases margins, improving the vehicle's ability to reject disturbances created by low-altitude winds.

BBC coverage.

Original Submission

"exec" writes:

A new study published in the online journal, Public Library of Science One (PLoS One), led by Richard Deth, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology at Nova Southeastern University's (NSU) College of Pharmacy, found that Vitamin B12 levels in the brain are significantly decreased in the elderly and are much lower in individuals with autism or schizophrenia, as compared to their peers at similar ages.

"These are particularly significant findings because the differences we found in brain B12 with aging, autism and schizophrenia are not seen in the blood, which is where B12 levels are usually measured." said Dr. Deth. "The large deficits of brain B12 from individuals with autism and schizophrenia could help explain why patients suffering from these disorders experience neurological and neuropsychiatric symptoms."

The study also found healthy elderly people in the age range of 61-80 have about three times lower levels of total brain B12 than younger age groups, which is a result of normal aging. This normal decrease may help adjust brain metabolism to sustain its function across the lifespan.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/researchers-find-brain-levels-of-vitamin-b12-decrease-with-age-and-are-prematurely-low-in-people-with-autism-and-schizophrenia

The original study (open, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146797) is also available.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A network administrator in Denmark is requiring users to perform a finger press on a banana to receive their Wi-Fi passwords. "The banana is mounted and in production," he posted Thursday, sharing two pictures. The banana uses a special new circuit board from Makey Makey to form a connection between the banana and a cheap Raspberry Pi computer with a screen attached, according to one technology site. They note that it could also detect finger presses on a doughnut, an apple, or even Jell-o, and offer this quote from the sys-admin about his motivations. "It's fun... It'll make people smile. It beats a static WPA password in funnyness." And most importantly, "When people leave our office, they can't access our WI-Fi because there's no banana to touch."

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Ars Technica has a new article that claims a secret SSH backdoor previously found in Fortinet hardware is in more of their products than they thought. Fortinet originally claimed that the backdoor only affected "older versions of Fortinet's FortiOS software." Apparently that was not the case and Fortinet has now posted an update to their blog that this issue is also found in their FortiSwitch, FortiAnalyzer and FortiCache products, including the current releases. Fortinet has just released a software update to eliminate this vulnerability. Looks like there's some patching to be done!

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Thursday Google announced they'd be including OpenShift Dedicated -- Red Hat's platform for container applications -- in Google's own cloud computing platform. "This service is underpinned by Red Hat Enterprise Linux," says Google's Martin Buhr, "and marries Red Hat's enterprise-grade container application platform with Google's 10 years of operational expertise around containers." Google argues it's part of their commitment to being "the Open Cloud," along with investments in open source tools like Kuernetes, and this is also beneficial to Red Hat. "Until now Red Hat PaaS required the use of Amazon Web Services, the only public cloud large enough to support it," notes one technology reporter. "Now, it can be deployed on Google as well."

Original Submission