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DeathMonkey writes:

The Republican-led Senate voted decisively to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 election by approving a wide-ranging sanctions package that targets key sectors of Russia's economy and individuals who carried out cyber attacks.

Senators on Wednesday passed the bipartisan sanctions legislation 97-2, underscoring broad support among Republicans and Democrats for rebuking Russia after U.S. intelligence agencies determined Moscow had deliberately interfered in the presidential campaign. Lawmakers who backed the measure also cited Russia's aggression in Syria and Ukraine.

Source: USNews.com

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Wikipedia has aggregated reports on an apartment building fire in London.

The Grenfell Tower fire started shortly before 1 a.m. local time on 14 June 2017, at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower, a block of flats on the Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington, western London, England.

At least 200 firefighters and 45 fire engines were involved in efforts to control the fire. Firefighters were trying to control pockets of fire on the higher floors after most of the rest of the building had been gutted.

[...] At 17:04 BST on 14 June twelve had been confirmed dead, with more fatalities expected to be reported; police spoke of "around 200 residents and a lot unaccounted for". Sixty-five were rescued by firefighters. Seventy-four people were confirmed to be in five hospitals across London, 20 of whom were in a critical condition. Ongoing fires on the upper floors and fears of structural collapse hindered the search and recovery effort.

[...] [The building] contained 120 one- and two-bedroom flats and was renovated in 2015-16.

[...] As part of the project, in 2015-2016, the concrete structure received new windows and new aluminium composite cladding (Arconic Reynobond and Reynolux material) with thermal insulation.

[...] Experts said the cladding essentially worked like a chimney in spreading the fire. The cladding could be seen burning and melting, causing additional speculation that it was not made of fire resistant material. One resident said, "The whole one side of the building was on fire. The cladding went up like a matchstick."

[...] Multiple major tower building fires have involved the same external cladding, including the 2009 Lakanal House fire in Camberwell, London, the 2009 Beijing Television Cultural Center fire and the 2015 fire at The Marina Torch, Dubai. Sam Webb, the architect who investigated the Lakanal fire and who sits on the All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety & Rescue Group, said "This tragedy was entirely predictable, sadly."

[...] In 2013, [residents' organisation Grenfell Action Group] published a 2012 fire risk assessment done by a TMO Health and Safety Officer that revealed significant safety violations. Firefighting equipment at the tower had not been checked for up to four years; fire extinguishers on site were expired, and some had "condemned" written on them in large black letters because they were so old.

[...] In a July 2014 Grenfell Tower regeneration newsletter, the KCTMO [Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation] instructed residents to stay in the flat in case of a fire:

Emergency fire arrangements
Our longstanding 'stay put' policy stays in force until you are told otherwise. This means that (unless there is a fire in your flat or in the hallway outside your flat) you should stay inside your flat. This is because Grenfell was designed according to rigorous fire safety standards. Also, the new front doors for each flat can withstand a fire for up to 30 minutes, which gives plenty of time for the fire brigade to arrive.

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Nesh writes:

ESA has an interesting story on how satellite imagery data is used in predicting desert locust plagues.

Satellites are helping to predict favourable conditions for desert locusts to swarm, which poses a threat to agricultural production and, subsequently, livelihoods and food security.

Desert locusts are a type of grasshopper found primarily in the Sahara, across the Arabian Peninsula and into India. The insect is usually harmless, but when they swarm they can migrate across long distances and cause widespread crop damage.

During the 2003–05 plague in West Africa, more than eight million people were affected. Up to 100% losses were reported on cereals, 90% on legumes and 85% on pasture. It took nearly $600 million and 13 million litres of pesticide to bring the plague under control.

[...] "I use the data products to understand the current situation, as well as the evolution of locust outbreaks," said Ahmed Salem Benahi, Chief Information Officer for Mauritania's National Centre for Locust Control.

"We now have the possibility to see the risk of a locust outbreak one to two months in advance, which helps us to better establish preventive control."

The dataset is a combination of measurements from ESA's SMOS and NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.

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charon writes:

Everyone has heard of the Large Hadron Collider, but how many have stopped to think how it gets cleaned? Or even suspected it required cleaning? Sarah Charley tells us how it works:

The inside of the beam pipes need to be spotless, which is why the LHC is thoroughly cleaned every year before it ramps up its summer operations program.

It's not dirt or grime that clogs the LHC. Rather, it's microscopic air molecules.

"The LHC is incredibly cold and under a strong vacuum, but it's not a perfect vacuum," says LHC accelerator physicist Giovanni Rumolo. "There's a tiny number of simple atmospheric gas molecules and even more frozen to the beam pipes' walls."

Protons racing around the LHC crash into these floating air molecules, detaching their electrons. The liberated electrons jump after the positively charged protons but quickly crash into the beam pipe walls, depositing heat and liberating even more electrons from the frozen gas molecules there.

This process quickly turns into an avalanche, which weakens the vacuum, heats up the cryogenic system, disrupts the proton beam and dramatically lowers the efficiency and reliability of the LHC.

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takyon writes:

The company that licensed the name, likeness, and recipes of the man who inspired the infamous "Soup Nazi" character is filing for bankruptcy:

Soupman Inc (SOUP.PK), the company that licensed the name and recipes of the chef who inspired the tyrannical "Soup Nazi" character on the television comedy "Seinfeld," filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

[...] Based in Staten Island, New York, Soupman sells products under the Original SoupMan brand. Soupman traces its roots to 1984, when Al Yeganeh opened his soup shop on West 55th Street in Midtown Manhattan and soon began drawing long lines of customers.

Yeganeh was the inspiration for Yev Kassem, a character first portrayed by Larry Thomas in a 1995 "Seinfeld" episode who was known for making customers follow strict rules to order or risk being turned away with his forceful cry: "No soup for you!"

A Soupman executive recently landed in hot water:

Federal prosecutors have accused Robert Bertrand, Soupman's chief financial officer, of avoiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax payments — including Social Security, Medicare and federal income — by paying employees off the books. [...] On Tuesday, the one accused of breaking rules was Mr. Bertrand, 62. Mr. Yeganeh was not named as a defendant.

According to the indictment, Mr. Bertrand made payments to Soupman employees in cash and stock assets, and did not report them properly, even after he acknowledged the objections of an external accountant. The off-the-books payments totaled $2.85 million, costing the United States about $594,000 in lost taxes from 2010 to 2014, prosecutors said.

Company website.

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A gunman opened fire at U.S. Congressmen and others who were gathered at a practice this morning for the Congressional Baseball Game. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and at least four others were reportedly injured. The gunman, who has been identified by unnamed sources as James T. Hodgkinson III, was taken to a local hospital where he died from his injuries:

A gunman unleashed a barrage of gunfire Wednesday at a park in Alexandria, Va., as Republican members of Congress held a morning baseball practice, wounding at least five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (La.).

The suspected gunman is James T. Hodgkinson III, 66, from Illinois, according to multiple law enforcement sources. President Trump announced that the gunman, who was wounded in a shootout with officers, has died at an area hospital.

The wounded also included two Capitol Police officers and a congressional aide, according to one law enforcement official and witness accounts.

Congressman Scalise was shot in the hip and is in stable condition.

Hodgkinson's motive may have already been identified by the media:

A Facebook page belonging to a person with the same name includes pictures of Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and rhetoric against President Trump, including a post that reads: "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co."

Charles Orear, 50, a restaurant manager from St. Louis, said in an interview Wednesday that he became friendly with Hodgkinson during their work together in Iowa on Sanders's campaign. Orear said Hodgkinson was a passionate progressive and showed no signs of violence or malice toward others.

Also at LA Times, Reuters, The Atlantic, The Hill, and CNN.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A federal appeals court today struck down price caps on intrastate phone calls made by prisoners. Inmates will thus have to continue paying high prices to make phone calls to family members, friends, and lawyers.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with prison phone company Global Tel*Link in its lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission. But that's exactly what the FCC's current leadership wanted. The FCC imposed the prison phone rate caps during the Obama administration, but current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai instructed commission lawyers to drop their court defense of the intrastate caps.

-- submitted from IRC

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takyon writes:

Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick has told staff that he is taking a break. Uber's board is also reallocating some of Kalanick's responsibilities:

There is no doubt that Travis Kalanick, the billionaire founder of the Uber lift-sharing platform, built a company that is one of the giants of Silicon Valley. However, recent months have seen him make a series of apologies for both his own behaviour and that of members of his leadership team. He has now told staff he is going to take some time away from the firm. He is set to have fewer responsibilities upon his return.

Meanwhile, a board meeting addressing sexual harassment at the company had its own sexist moment just minutes in, captured on audio and leaked to Yahoo! Finance:

While speaking, Huffington pointed out that Uber was adding a woman to its board, Wan Ling Martello.

"There's a lot of data that shows when there's one woman on the board, it's much more likely that there will be a second woman on the board," she said around six minutes into the recording.

"Actually what it shows is it's much likely to be more talking," Uber board member David Bonderman said.

"Oh. Come on, David," Huffington responded.

Also at NYT, TechCrunch, and The Verge.

Previously: Uber's Board is Meeting to Discuss CEO Kalanick Temporarily Stepping Down

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Microsoft regularly issues security updates, but it added a little something extra on Tuesday: it's letting all customers, even those using older versions of Windows, update their software.

This move is an attempt to avoid another ransomware outbreak like WannaCry, also called WannaCrypt, which rocked the web last month.

"The WannaCrypt ransomware served as an all too real example of the danger of cyber attacks to individuals and businesses globally," Adrienne Hall, general manager of Microsoft's Cyber Defense Operations Center, wrote in a blog post. "In reviewing the updates for this month, some vulnerabilities were identified that pose elevated risk of cyber attacks by government organizations, sometimes referred to as nation-state actors or other copycat organizations."

Microsoft said it made the decision to apply this assortment of updates to provide further protection against potential attacks with similar characteristics as WannaCrypt. The security updates will be delivered automatically through Windows Update to devices running Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7.

Source: CNET

Also at Ars Technica

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A number of metals are crucial components in a range of technologies, from smartphone batteries to electric cars. So could a market shortage and spiralling prices put the breaks on the global tech industry?

Cobalt has been used for thousands of years to give a deep blue-ish hue to pottery, paint and jewellery. But more recently, it has become a crucial metal used in the batteries powering millions of tech gadgets, including the electric cars made by Tesla and others.

About half of all cobalt demand comes from the expansion of electric vehicle production and development worldwide.

The problem is, we can't get enough of it. No wonder its price has doubled in the last year alone.

"We are definitely entering a period of deficit and that will start this year," says Lara Smith, managing director of Core Consultants, a commodities researcher.

"In 2016, the supply of cobalt was about 104,000 tonnes and demand was about 103,500. The hybrid and electric vehicles are in a nascent growth phase, so as we continue along this track we expect there to be a greater and greater deficit."

Only 2% of cobalt is mined directly - 98% of it is produced as a by-product of nickel and copper mining. Unlike other battery metals like lithium, cobalt is quite rare and its quality can vary geographically. About two thirds of the supply comes from Africa's Congo region.

It's little wonder then that First Cobalt Corporation in Toronto recently invested in seven large areas of land in the Central African "copperbelt" with the intention of finding more copper and cobalt reserves in the ground.

-- submitted from IRC

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charon writes:

Insomnia is probably the most common health complaint. Even after treatment, poor sleep remains a persistent vulnerability for many people. By having determined the risk genes, professors Danielle Posthuma (VU and VUmc) and Eus Van Someren (Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, VU and VUmc), the lead researchers of this international project, have come closer to unravelling the biological mechanisms that cause the predisposition for insomnia.

Professor Van Someren, specialized in sleep and insomnia, believes that the findings are the start of a path towards an understanding of insomnia at the level of communication within and between neurons, and thus towards finding new ways of treatment.

He also hopes that the findings will help with the recognition of insomnia. "As compared to the severity, prevalence and risks of insomnia, only few studies targeted its causes. Insomnia is all too often dismissed as being 'all in your head'. Our research brings a new perspective. Insomnia is also in the genes."

In a sample of 113,006 individuals, the researchers found 7 genes for insomnia. These genes play a role in the regulation of transcription, the process where DNA is read in order to make an RNA copy of it, and exocytosis, the release of molecules by cells in order to communicate with their environment. One of the identified genes, MEIS1, has previously been related to two other sleep disorders: Periodic Limb Movements of Sleep (PLMS) and Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS). By collaborating with Konrad Oexle and colleagues from the Institute of Neurogenomics at the Helmholtz Zentrum, München, Germany, the researchers could conclude that the genetic variants in the gene seem to contribute to all three disorders. Strikingly, PLMS and RLS are characterized by restless movement and sensation, respectively, whereas insomnia is characterized mainly by a restless stream of consciousness.

Source: Science Daily

Anke R Hammerschlag, Sven Stringer, et al. Genome-wide association analysis of insomnia complaints identifies risk genes and genetic overlap with psychiatric and metabolic traits. Nature Genetics, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/ng.3888

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"exec" writes:

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Research conducted over more than a decade indicates that loneliness increases self-centeredness and, to a lesser extent, self-centeredness also increases loneliness.

[...] The researchers wrote that "targeting self-centeredness as part of an intervention to lessen loneliness may help break a positive feedback loop that maintains or worsens loneliness over time." Their study is the first to test a prediction from the Cacioppos' evolutionary theory that loneliness increases self-centeredness. Such research is important because, as many studies have shown, lonely people are more susceptible to a variety of physical and mental health problems as well as higher mortality rates than their non-lonely counterparts.

[...] Early psychological research treated loneliness as an anomalous or temporary feeling of distress that had no redeeming value or adaptive purpose. "None of that could be further from the truth," Stephanie Cacioppo said.

[...] "Physical pain is an aversive signal that alerts us of potential tissue damange [sic] and motivates us to take care of our physical body," the UChicago researchers wrote. Loneliness, meanwhile, is part of a warning system that motivates people to repair or replace their deficient social relationships.

-- submitted from IRC

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Dr. Lowe, from In the Pipeline, writes about the company responsible for EpiPen, with quotes taken from The New York Times:

To understand Mylan’s culture, consider a series of conversations that began inside the company in 2014.

In (2014) meetings, the executives began warning Mylan’s top leaders that the price increases seemed like unethical profiteering at the expense of sick children and adults, according to people who participated in the conversations. Over the next 16 months, those internal warnings were repeatedly aired. At one gathering, executives shared their concerns with Mylan’s chairman, Robert Coury.

Mr. Coury replied that he was untroubled. He raised both his middle fingers and explained, using colorful language, that anyone criticizing Mylan, including its employees, ought to go copulate with themselves. Critics in Congress and on Wall Street, he said, should do the same. And regulators at the Food and Drug Administration? They, too, deserved a round of anatomically challenging self-fulfillment.

[...] As the article says, the company has decided that all the criticism is just the cost of doing business, and that their business is selling EpiPens at the highest cost they can. Bad press, upset parents, calls for them to change – none of that means much.

[...] Another thing that happens when you operate this way is that other government agencies get motivated to take a closer look at you. Last fall, Mylan paid $465 million to settle a misclassification problem that led to them getting higher rebates than they should have on EpiPens distributed through Medicare. But now it appears that there’s another $1.27 billion involved, according the the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General.

[...] As it happens, some of the company’s investors are trying to replace the board members, and just this morning, ISS (Institutional Shareholder Services) came down on their side. They’re recommending that shareholders vote against ten directors and against ratifying the compensation plans for the top executives. That’s a pretty big deal, since ISS handles the proxy voting for a lot of big investors and funds, and if given the go-ahead can vote things en masse. This, you can be sure, is a cause for concern in the upper suites, and it should be.

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/06/12/mylan-begins-harvesting-the-crop-its-sown
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/business/angry-about-epipen-prices-executive-dont-care-much.html?_r=1
http://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/mylan-investors-rally-votes-against-chairman-coury-and-his-97m-pay-package

Previous Coverage of Mylan and their Practices:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/10/06/021244
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/08/23/0136202

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looorg writes:

The Cyberwarfare campaign against ISIS is apparently somewhat of a failure. It has not had the desired outcome on their recruitment and pr-campaign machines. Apparently the enemy just keeps on setting up new accounts. So it's almost like a real world guerrilla warfare but in cyberspace (apparently it's not cool enough to just call it the Internet anymore).

... the results have been a consistent disappointment

... it has become clear that recruitment efforts and communications hubs reappear almost as quickly as they are torn down.

In the endeavor, called Operation Glowing Symphony, the National Security Agency and its military cousin, United States Cyber Command, obtained the passwords of several Islamic State administrator accounts and used them to block out fighters and delete content. It was initially deemed a success because battlefield videos disappeared. ... But the results were only temporary. American officials later discovered that the material had been either restored or moved to other servers.

Some of the effects are employed repeatedly over days. Locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts — or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack — is now standard operating procedure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/world/middleeast/isis-cyber.html?_r=0

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Thexalon writes:

Yahoo Inc, long-standing "other search engine", will be acquired by Verizon for $4.5 billion.

Reports can be found on CNN, CNBC, and Fortune among many other sources.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer will be walking away with $23 million.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Earth has been hit by objects in the past, with devastating effects. Scientists largely agree that it was an asteroid or comet impact that started the chain of events that wiped out the dinosaurs around 60 million years ago.

[...] impacts from objects in space are just one of several ways that humanity and most of life on Earth could suddenly disappear.

We are already observing that extinctions are happening now at an unprecedented rate. In 2014 it was estimated that the extinction rate is now 1,000 times greater than before humans were on the Earth. The estimated number of extinctions ranges from 200 to 2,000 species per year.

From all of this very worrying data, it would not be a stretch to say that we are currently within a doomsday scenario. Of course, the “day” is longer than 24 hours but may be instead in the order of a century or two.

So what can we do about this potential prospect of impending doom?

[...] But the threats we face are so unpredictable that we need to have a backup plan. We need to plan for the time after our doomsday and think about how a post-apocalyptic Earth may recover and humanity will flourish again.

How to backup life on Earth

As computer experts, you are familiar with backup plans. What should we do to backup human survival ?

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takyon writes:

What could become the world's fastest rocket-powered car will be tested for the first time in October:

The Bloodhound supersonic car will run for the first time on 26 October. It is going to conduct a series of "slow speed" trials on the runway at Newquay airport in Cornwall.

Engineers want to shake down the vehicle's systems before heading out to South Africa next year to try to break the land speed record. This stands at 763mph (1,228km/h), and Bloodhound's aim is to raise the mark in two stages - by getting first to 800mph and then to 1,000mph.

The Newquay trials will not see anything like those speeds. The 9,000ft-long (2,744m) runway at the former RAF base is simply too short to allow Bloodhound to use the full thrust at its disposal. Instead, driver Andy Green will take the car up to about 200mph using just its Eurofighter-Typhoon jet engine. The rocket motor that would ordinarily provide additional power will not even be in the car as its development has yet to be completed.

Previously: 3D-Printed Tech to Steer Bloodhound Supersonic Car

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