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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

El Reg reports

Cops at Stansted airport in Essex, UK, couldn't believe their eyes when a passenger turned up for a flight with what looked like a gun in his bag.

The unnamed pillock had chosen to protect his iPhone with a black case that sported a realistic-looking handgun built into the base. It's difficult to see the attraction of such a gadget, since it makes the phone a pain to use--but presumably it also makes the owner feel like a bit of a pwoppa gangsta.

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butthurt writes:

The United States and South Korea issued a joint statement saying that the United States is to place a THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) anti-missile system in South Korea. The system uses radar to identify approaching missiles, against which interceptor missiles can be fired. It would be under control of the United States military. According to the statement, the system

will be focused solely on North Korean nuclear and missile threats and would not be directed towards any third party nations.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that it "expresses strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition" and called for a "stop" to the deployment.

coverage:

• CCTV (Chinese government source)
• Xinhua (Chinese government source; story from February)
• Xinhua (story from 29 June)
• Kores Times
• Reuters (story from 29 June)
• Los Angeles Times
• Washington Post
• BBC
• Reuters
• New York Times

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AnonTechie writes:

In tests, they missed 98 percent of the vulnerabilities in researchers' code. Researchers at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering in collaboration with the MIT Lincoln Laboratory and Northeastern University decided to find out how much they are missing. LAVA, or Large-Scale Automated Vulnerability Addition, is a technique created by the researchers to test the limits of bug-finding tools in order to help developers improve them. It does that by intentionally adding vulnerabilities to a program's source code.

LAVA makes targeted edits in real programs' source code to create hundreds of thousands of unstudied, highly realistic vulnerabilities that span the execution lifetime of a program, are embedded in normal control and data flow, and manifest only for a small fraction of inputs so as to avoid shutting the entire program down.

When tested with existing bug-finding software representing both the "fuzzing" and symbolic-execution approaches commonly used today, just two percent of the bugs created by LAVA were detected.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3093420/the-truth-about-bug-finders-theyre-essentially-useless.html

[Paper]: LAVA: Large-scale Automated Vulnerability Addition [PDF]

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fork(2) writes:

From Phys.org:

A trio of math and computer scientists has developed a means for developing generalized frameworks that allow for clustering networks based on higher-order connectivity patterns. In their paper published in the journal Science, Austin Benson and Jure Leskovec with Stanford University and David Gleich with Perdue[sic] University outline their framework ideas and offer real life examples of ways their techniques can be applied to help understand complex networks in simpler ways. Natasa Przulj and Noel Malod-Dognin with University College London offer an analysis of the work done by the trio in a Perspectives piece in the same journal issue.

As the authors note, it is not difficult to make out patterns in very small networks, a person trying to do so need only watch the system at work for a period of time. It is when networks become bigger and more complex that they become unwieldy. Even in such cases, however, low-order patterns are often still easy to discern -- counting nodes or edges for example, offers some degree of network size, though doing so tells you very little about what the network does and how -- that is where high-order organizational principles come into play. Unfortunately attempts to create a means for providing more information or detail about such systems has to date, not met with much success. In this new effort, the researchers describe a framework they have developed that offers some of the pattern recognition seen in smaller networks, with more complex networks.

They start, Przulj and Malod-Dognin note, with one of the more common higher-order structures known as small network subgraphs, which they refer to as network motifs--those that are statistically significant can be used as building blocks for the building of a mathematical framework, which is of course what the researchers have done. Relationship identification among the motifs was done by applying clustering algorithms. The result is a framework that highlights and/or identifies which of the motifs are the most critical when a network is in operation.

The trio tested their framework technique by using it to analyze part of the neuronal network of a roundworm, and report that it revealed the particular cluster of 20 neurons responsible for performing actions such as standing and wiggling its head. They also gained insights into air traffic patterns by using it to perform an analysis of airports in the U.S. and Canada. They suggest such frameworks may be used in a wide variety of applications.

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fork(2) writes:

From a NASA press release:

NASA will host a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday, July 13, to discuss the groundbreaking research and cargo aboard the next SpaceX commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station.

Researchers will highlight space-based experiments to test the capabilities for sequencing DNA, understand bone loss, track heart changes in microgravity and regulate temperature aboard spacecraft. Participants also will discuss the first international docking adapter headed to station, which will allow commercial spacecraft to dock to the station when transporting astronauts in the near future as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program.

Although participation in the teleconference is open only to media (registration required), the audio will be live streamed. For more information about the mission go here.

The SpaceX Dragon capsule is targeted to launch at 12:45 a.m. Monday, July 18, on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The spacecraft will carry crew supplies, scientific research and hardware to the orbital laboratory to support the Expedition 48 and 49 crew members.

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fork(2) writes:

ScienceDaily describes results that are of great technical interest for magnetic storage:

So-called "zero-point energy" is a term familiar to some cinema lovers or series fans; in the fictional world of animated films such as "The Incredibles" or the TV series "Stargate Atlantis," it denotes a powerful and virtually inexhaustible energy source. Whether it could ever be used as such is arguable. Scientists at Julich have now found out that it plays an important role in the stability of nanomagnets. These are of great technical interest for the magnetic storage of data, but so far have never been sufficiently stable. Researchers are now pointing the way to making it possible to produce nanomagnets with low zero-point energy and thus a higher degree of stability.

Since the 1970s, the number of components in computer chips has doubled every one to two years, their size diminishing. This development has made the production of small, powerful computers such as smart phones possible for the first time. In the meantime, many components are only about as big as a virus and the miniaturization process has slowed down. This is because below approximately a nanometre, a billionth of a meter in size, quantum effects come into play. They make it harder, for example, to stabilise magnetic moments. Researchers worldwide are looking for suitable materials for magnetically stable nanomagnets so that data can be stored safely in the smallest of spaces.

In this context, stable means that the magnetic moments point consistently in one of two preassigned directions. The direction then codes the bit. However, the magnetic moments of atoms are always in motion. The trigger here is the so-called zero-point energy, the energy that a quantum mechanical system possesses in its ground state at absolute zero temperature. "It makes the magnetic moments of atoms fluctuate even at the lowest of temperatures and thus works against the stability of the magnetic moments," explains Dr. Julen Ibanez-Azpiroz, from the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group "Functional Nanoscale Structure Probe and Simulation Laboratory" at the Peter Grunberg Institute and at the Institute for Advanced Simulation. When too much energy exists within the system, the magnetic moments turn over and the saved information is lost.

"Our calculations show that the zero-point magnetic fluctuations can even reach the same order of magnitude as the magnetic moment itself," reports Ibamez-Azpiroz. "This explains why the search for stable nanomagnets is so difficult." There is, however, also a counterpart to this, in the form of an energy barrier, which the moment must overcome as it rotates. The height of the barrier depends on the material it is made from.

The Julich researchers investigated how quantum effects influence magnetic stability in detail using particularly promising materials from the class of transition metals. From their results they have established guidelines for the development of stable nanomagnets with low levels of quantum fluctuations. Their chart showing the suitability of different elements should serve as a construction kit for combining complex nanomagnets made from several different atoms.

Their paper appears in the journal Nano Letters ; original press release.

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We had two Soylentils submit stories on Google's experiment with cryptography designed to survive after quantum computing becomes effective.

Google Implementing Post-Quantum Cryptography in Chrome

takyon writes:

Google is planning ahead for the death of many encryption algorithms by experimenting with post-quantum cryptography in its alpha/"Canary" version of Google Chrome:

If quantum computing ever lives up to its promise (and that's still a big 'if' at this stage), somebody could use this technology to retroactively break any communications that were encrypted with today's standard encryption algorithms. To guard against this, Google today announced that it will now start experimenting using post-quantum algorithms to encrypt the connections between the experimental Canary version of Chrome and some of its services.

To be clear, this is only an experiment for now and only a small number of connections between the browser and Google's servers will use this new algorithm. The idea here, though, is to bring this idea to the forefront now and "gain real-world experience with the larger data structures that post-quantum algorithms will likely require," as Google engineer Matt Braithwaite writes in today's announcement. [...] Specifically, the team is using the New Hope algorithm, which was designed for providing post-quantum security for TLS — the protocol that makes HTTPS secure.

You can check to see if the algorithm is being used on certain domains by opening up the Security Panel developer tool and looking for "CECPQ1" next to "Key Exchange".

TechCrunch also reported on a post-quantum cryptography startup which recently raised $10.3 million in funding.

Google is Testing a New Encryption that is Resistant to Quantum Cryptography

Fnord666 writes:

In an article entitled "Google Tests New Crypto in Chrome to Fend Off Quantum Attacks", Andy Greenberg writes that Google is beginning a two year experiment to use a new form of encryption in the TLS portion of some Chrome apps and Google services. Using Ring Learning with Errors, or Ring-LWE to enhance the more traditional elliptic curve cryptography, Google is speculating that the combination will be resistant to quantum attacks. Whether that will be true remains to be proven however.

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butthurt writes:

CNN has a picture essay about workers who gather sulphur from the crater of the Ijen volcano in East Java, Indonesia. The volcano emits fumes which catch fire in places, and which contain sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide. The sulphur is hand-carried down the mountain. It is used mainly in the refining of sugar.

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fork(2) writes:

Phys.org reports on deep learning projects.

The aim of their collaboration is to achieve machine-based translation between the languages of the European Union so that comprehensible texts are achieved for as many language combinations as possible. Two of the EU-funded research projects are being led by the Saarbrucken computer linguist Josef van Genabith.

[...] QT21 is a consortium of fourteen leading research institutions for machine translation in Europe and Hong Kong that includes universities, research institutes, such as DFKI, and numerous companies. "Our common goal is to exploit machine learning to significantly improve automatic translation, particularly of more complex languages such as Latvian or Czech," says van Genabith, who heads the project, which was rolled out a year ago. The European Union has approved a total of 3.9 million euros for the three-year project, of which around one million has been allocated to Saarbrucken.

The European Language Resources Coordination (ELRC) is a second project lead by DFKI and Josef van Genabith in which a European consortium has been contracted by the European Commission to collect suitable language data sets that will enable the European Commission's automated translation platform (CEF AT) to be adapted and optimized for the daily requirements of public administrators in all EU Member States as well as Iceland and Norway. ELRC is one of the most comprehensive collections of language data worldwide.

[...] Research results in machine translation will be presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) which will take place August 7- 12, 2016 at the Humboldt University in Berlin (acl2016.org). The scientists will present the results of an international competition on machine translation in a workshop at the conference: http://www.statmt.org/wmt16

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bradley13 writes:

Ok, soylentils, tell me I am behind the times. I have just discovered notifications in browsers. At first glance, I find them pretty horrifying.

For anyone else who somehow missed the train: notifications allow websites to pop-up information, even if you are not visiting the web site. I discovered this when I logged into Facebook for the first time in a couple of years. Up came a little window asking for permission to show notifications, and I stupidly clicked "yes". The next day, I open my browser to the usual IXQuick start-page, and...up pops a Facebook dialog.

The newest version of notifications about to come out will show you notifications even if you don't have your browser open. So: your browser will constantly be active in the background, and some unknown number of websites are constantly active in the browser - in particular, the newest Chrome on Android.

I'm of the old school: a program should execute only when I tell it to, and should do only what I ask of it. Notifications seem like they are predestined to be a path for spyware and possibly malware. Am I overly paranoid? Opinions?

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takyon writes:

Humans aren't just causing species to become extinct. We are also inadvertently creating new species by changing environments, building novel ecosystems, and rapidly transporting organisms all over the globe:

A growing number of examples show that humans not only contribute to the extinction of species but also drive evolution, and in some cases the emergence of entirely new species. This can take place through mechanisms such as accidental introductions, domestication of animals and crops, unnatural selection due to hunting, or the emergence of novel ecosystems such as the urban environment.

[...] "The prospect of 'artificially' gaining novel species through human activities is unlikely to elicit the feeling that it can offset losses of 'natural' species. Indeed, many people might find the prospect of an artificially biodiverse world just as daunting as an artificially impoverished one" says lead author and Postdoc Joseph Bull from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen.

The study which was carried out in collaboration with the University of Queensland was published today in Proceedings of Royal Society B [DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.0600]. It highlights numerous examples of how human activities influence species' evolution. For instance: as the common house mosquito adapted to the environment of the underground railway system in London, it established a subterranean population. Now named the 'London Underground mosquito', it can no longer interbreed with its above ground counterpart and is effectively thought to be a new species.

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fork(2) writes:

Science News reports on a proof of concept for reconstructing nuclear blasts decades after detonation.

A new type of fallout forensics can reconstruct nuclear blasts decades after detonation. By measuring the relative abundance of various elements in debris left over from nuclear explosions, researchers say they can accurately estimate the amount of energy released during the initial blast.

As proof of concept, the researchers estimated the yield of the 1945 Trinity nuclear test in New Mexico -- the world's first detonation of a nuclear device. The work pegged the explosion as equivalent to 22.1 kilotons of TNT, close to the official estimate of 21 kilotons. Applying the method to modern blasts could help regulators identify nuclear tests long after the fact and better enforce nonproliferation treaties, the researchers propose in a paper to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of July 4.

Chemist Susan Hanson and colleagues at New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory looked at the element molybdenum in glassy debris created by the Trinity test. Stable molybdenum forms when zirconium from the bomb's fireball radioactively decays. The relative abundance of different molybdenum isotopes created from this process differs from that found naturally. By measuring the overabundance of certain molybdenum isotopes, researchers can determine the original amount of zirconium created by the explosion. Pairing the amount of remnant plutonium in the debris with the zirconium estimate, the researchers can estimate a blast's explosive yield.

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

The International Socialist Organization reports

Workers at an International Paper factory in Delaware, Ohio are on strike against the company's demand of unlimited overtime for up to 84 hours a week: 12 hours a day for all seven days.

"[The company is] telling us, 'Oh, we're not going to use it'", says Mike Schnitzler, who has worked at the factory for 21 years. "But if you're not going to use it, why ask for it? We have to fight for what we believe in--there's no family time or anything like that if you're working seven days a week, 12 hours a day."

The 130 workers, members of the Columbus-based Teamsters Local 284, had been without a contract since last summer when the company decided in April to implement its "last, best, and final offer", which included the outrageous overtime provision.

In response, Local 284 launched an unfair labor practice strike, declaring that International Paper was not negotiating in good faith.

[...] A few days into the strike, International Paper was able to get an injunction limiting the number of workers who can picket in front of the entrances to the factory and warehouse to three. As they did in the recent Verizon strike on the East Coast and countless other [strikes], police have enforced this injunction, preventing workers from confronting and slowing down scabs on their way into the factory.

After winning the injunction, company managers further harassed their striking employees by frequently calling the police on picketers, although workers reported that this tactic mainly succeeded in getting the cops annoyed at the company for continually calling them over nothing.

[...] Many people in the community agree with a point that Schnitzler made about why this strike is important, not just for members of Local 284, but for all workers:

This is a Fortune 500 company--one of the largest paper companies in the world. If they're successful in getting all of this stuff through, what's to stop other companies from doing the same thing? Nobody wants to live their life working in a factory and never getting out, never getting to spend time with their family.

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takyon writes:

from the tyrant dept.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May is favored to become the new leader of the Conservatives and the UK's next Prime Minister following a first round of voting, the elimination of Liam Fox, drop out of Stephen Crabb, and the earlier drop out of Boris Johnson:

Home Secretary Theresa May has comfortably won the first round of the contest to become the next Conservative leader and UK prime minister. Mrs May got 165 of the 329 votes cast by Tory MPs. Andrea Leadsom came second with 66 votes. Michael Gove got 48. [...] Further voting will narrow the field to two. The eventual outcome, decided by party members, is due on 9 September. Following the result, frontrunner Mrs May - who campaigned for the UK to stay in the EU - received the backing of Mr Fox, a former defence secretary and Brexit campaigner, and Mr Crabb, the work and pensions secretary, who backed Remain.

[...] Mrs May - who has said she will deliver Brexit if PM - said she was "pleased" with the result and "grateful" to colleagues for their support. She said there was a "big job" ahead to unite the party and the country following the referendum, to "negotiate the best possible deal as we leave the EU" and to "make Britain work for everyone". She added: "I am the only candidate capable of delivering these three things as prime minister, and tonight it is clear that I am also the only one capable of drawing support from the whole of the Conservative Party."

Update: The race to lead the Conservative Party and become the next Prime Minister of the UK is down to two women: Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom:

fork(2) writes:

The efforts begun by Code.org and others to bring computer science education into US schools are beginning to bear fruit. Tucson News Now reports on one:

MARANA, AZ (Tucson News Now) -- Marana Unified School District will offer Arizona's first Computer Science Immersion Schools, selected by the creators of Code To The Future.

Starting this fall both the new school Gladden Farms Elementary and Quail Run Elementary will be integrating computer science with curriculum content in English language arts, math, science, and social studies. Programming and game design will be part of the teaching methods, so students will have a well-rounded understanding of how to use technology to create.

"The Marana Unified School District is honored to lead the way in capitalizing on Computer Science's potential as a teaching tool," states Dr. Doug Wilson, superintendent of the Marana Unified School District, in a recent release. "As a District committed to inspiring students to learn today and lead tomorrow, MUSD is ensuring students are provided with the skills necessary to be successful in an ever changing world. Students at these schools will have an opportunity to develop Coding skills as part of the daily curriculum. Along with the comprehensive curriculum, students will have access to Chromebook mobile devices and new collaborative furniture, creating an engaging, interactive and fun learning environment where we will be preparing students for the high growth, high demand jobs of the future."

Another related project in Maryland. And one in Vancouver.

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