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takyon writes:

The Washington Post reports:

The headlines sound thrilling. One might say they bait a click.

"ANONYMOUS SAYS NASA HAS EVIDENCE OF ALIEN LIFE. DOES IT?" — Newsweek

"The world's biggest hacking group thinks NASA is about to announce alien life." — The Independent

Maybe you know of Anonymous as a band of socially enlightened hackers: liberators of knowledge from elites who want to hide it from the public. You certainly know what NASA is. So you click. And what you get, if you follow the articles to the amateur YouTube channel that is their source, is video of a man in a Guy Fawkes mask — "Anonymous Global," he calls himself — reading out old quotes from NASA spokespeople in a spooky, synthesized voice.

The man in the anarchist mask quotes a NASA science director's testimony from a congressional hearing in April, all totally public: "We are on the verge of making one of the most profound, unprecedented discoveries in history."

That quote — taken out of context and adorned with Anonymous Global's wild conspiracy theorizing — became the basis for millions of views and countless news articles, forcing the science director in question and NASA officials to explicitly deny the claims of a shoddily produced YouTube video this week. "There's no pending announcement regarding extraterrestrial life," a NASA spokesman wrote to The Washington Post, in case you were still in doubt.

Also at Space.com, MassLive, the The San Diego Union-Tribune, and The Guardian (editorial).

Update: (in response to a June 29th episode of The Alex Jones Show) NASA Denies That It's Running a Child Slave Colony on Mars

Recently:
UFO researcher says new documentary exposes 'what the secret agenda has been'
NASA Disputes Origins of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop "Healing Stickers"

Original Submission

butthurt writes:

European aerospace giant Airbus and its partner, OneWeb, have begun the production of a satellite mega-constellation. The network will comprise at least 600 spacecraft in the first instance, but could eventually encompass more than 2,000. The aim is to deliver broadband links from orbit to every corner of the globe. In particular, the project wants every school to have a connection.

Building so large a constellation requires a step-change in the manufacture of satellites - especially for Airbus. It can take Europe's biggest space company many months and hundreds of millions of dollars to build some of today's specialist platforms. But for the OneWeb venture, it is all about high volume and low cost. That means new assembly line methods akin to those in factories producing cars and planes. The idea is to turn out three units per shift at well less than a million dollars a piece. The boss of Airbus, Tom Enders, concedes he initially thought the OneWeb concept to be fantasy. "Everything in space as you know traditionally has been 'gold-plated'; it had to work perfectly, [and have] the most expensive materials, etc. "Here, we've had to go other ways, to be really commercial and calculating according to the target cost because that is very decisive in the whole business case for OneWeb," he told BBC News.

[...] The establishment of the OneWeb constellation requires the greatest rocket campaign in the history of spaceflight. More than 20 Soyuz vehicles have been booked to throw clusters of 32-36 satellites into a web some 1,200km above the Earth. There should be just under 300 on station by the end of 2020, the start of 2021; more than 600 about a year or so later; and then over 800 by the middle of the decade.

OneWeb and Airbus are not the only companies planning a mega-constellation in the sky. SpaceX, Boeing, ViaSat and others have all sought regulatory approval. But not everyone will succeed in getting the necessary multi-billion-dollar financing, and Airbus believes the OneWeb concept has first-mover advantage.

—BBC News

additional coverage:

• Metro

previous story:
Competing Communications Constellations Considered

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Beer lovers may soon have a gut-friendly drink to raise a toast to, thanks to the creation of a novel probiotic sour beer by a team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS). This new specialty beer incorporates the probiotic strain Lactobacillus paracasei L26, which was first isolated from human intestines and has the ability to neutralise toxins and viruses, as well as regulate the immune system.

Associate Professor Liu Shao Quan (left) and Miss Chan Mei Zhi Alcine (right) from the Food Science and Technology Programme at NUS created a novel probiotic beer that boosts immunity and improves gut health.
The idea of producing a probiotic beer was first mooted by Miss Chan Mei Zhi Alcine, a fourth-year student from the Food Science and Technology Programme under the NUS Faculty of Science, who consumes dairy-based probiotic beverages daily.

"The health benefits of probiotics are well known. While good bacteria are often present in food that have been fermented, there are currently no beers in the market that contain probiotics. Developing sufficient counts of live probiotics in beer is a challenging feat as beers contain hop acids that prevent the growth and survival of probiotics. As a believer of achieving a healthy diet through consuming probiotics, this is a natural choice for me when I picked a topic for my final-year project," said Miss Chan, who will be graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Science with Honours (Highest Distinction) from NUS in July 2017. 

Studies have shown that consuming food and beverages with live counts of probiotics are more effective in delivering health effects than eating those with inactive probiotics. Currently, the recommendation by the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics is to have a minimum of 1 billion probiotics per serving in order to attain the maximum health benefits.

Source: http://news.nus.edu.sg/press-releases/novel-probiotic-beer-boosts-immunity

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

"Today, June 29th 2017, WikiLeaks publishes documents from the OutlawCountry project of the CIA that targets computers running the Linux operating system. OutlawCountry allows for the redirection of all outbound network traffic on the target computer to CIA controlled machines for ex- and infiltration purposes. The malware consists of a kernel module that creates a hidden netfilter table on a Linux target; with knowledge of the table name, an operator can create rules that take precedence over existing netfilter/iptables rules and are concealed from an user or even system administrator.

The installation and persistence method of the malware is not described in detail in the document; an operator will have to rely on the available CIA exploits and backdoors to inject the kernel module into a target operating system. OutlawCountry v1.0 contains one kernel module for 64-bit CentOS/RHEL 6.x; this module will only work with default kernels. Also, OutlawCountry v1.0 only supports adding covert DNAT rules to the PREROUTING chain."

https://www.wikileaks.org/vault7/#OutlawCountry

-- Leaked Documents :

= OutlawCountry v1.0 User Manual
https://www.wikileaks.org/vault7/document/OutlawCountry_v1_0_User_Manual/
(PDF) https://www.wikileaks.org/vault7/document/OutlawCountry_v1_0_User_Manual/OutlawCountry_v1_0_User_Manual.pdf

= OutlawCountry v1.0 Test Plan
https://www.wikileaks.org/vault7/document/OutlawCountry_v1_0_Test_Plan/
(PDF) https://www.wikileaks.org/vault7/document/OutlawCountry_v1_0_Test_Plan/OutlawCountry_v1_0_Test_Plan.pdf

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Just days after Lenovo Group Chief Yang Yuanqing hinted that Lenovo may be pulling out of the PC and Server markets in favor of focusing on datacenters and mobile devices, long-time Thinkpad designer and Retro Thinkpad Project Manager David Hill has announced his resignation from the company. Mr. Hill, who had been in charge of the original ThinkPad design in the early 90's and rose to the rank of Vice President of Design at Lenovo, states:

"I want to broaden my view and create the opportunity to do more in the field of design, not less."

The 25th Anniversary "Retro ThinkPad" project, which was in development for over two years and received over 13,000 responses from long-time ThinkPad fans, is still, for the time being, scheduled for an October 5th announcement. Could internal pressures to minimize costs have resulted in Mr. Hill deciding to take his name off the Retro ThinkPad project which he spearheaded for two and a half years?

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Ubuntu's Unity interface is gone, which means there's one less desktop to choose from in Linux-land. And while dozens remain to choose from, Unity was one of the most polished out there. Many will miss its detail and design.

One of the desktops that is nearly as well polished, and therefore worth Unity fans considering, is the not-quite-as-new-kid on the block, Elementary OS.

Elementary OS actually began in 2011 as a theme for Ubuntu. It has evolved well beyond that now, with its own homegrown desktop environment dubbed Pantheon, 13 custom apps, and a distinct and very nice set of custom icons and themes. Under the hood it's still very much Ubuntu/Debian, so all the commands and basic apps you're used to will be there, even if you have to install them yourself. The Ubuntu/Debian underpinning also means you get the security and stability of those projects.

I've tested Elementary OS quite a bit over the last few years and I can say that, if you were put off by the bugginess of early releases, it's worth another look. The latest release, called Loki, has been very stable in my testing and features some really nice homegrown apps. The Elementary OS team is very good at getting the core of an app right and then polishing up the details over time.

Awesome. I really miss how Unity would slow my desktop to a crawl.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has published a report including the number of individuals known to have taken their lives under California's end of life bill. The law requires the CDPH to provide annual reports about the effects of the law. 111 people have died after taking prescribed aid-in-dying drugs from June 9th, 2016 to December 31st, 2016 (subsequent reports will cover full calendar years):

The law — which allows terminally ill adults to obtain life-ending drugs from their doctors — took effect on June 9, 2016. Between then and the end of the year, 191 people received prescriptions under the act and 111 people died after taking prescribed aid-in-dying drugs, according to a report released Tuesday by the California Department of Public Health.

In that time period, a total of 258 people began the end-of-life process under the law, which requires patients to make two verbal requests to their doctors at least 15 days apart.

Previously: California Legislature Approves Bill Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide - UK Reject Similar Law
California to Permit Assisted Suicide Starting June 9th, Could Raise Smoking Age to 21

Original Submission

DeathMonkey writes:

In the years after health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act unfurled in Multnomah County, Oregon, cardiac arrests among those newly covered fell 17 percent, researchers report this week in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The pilot study, led by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and the Heart Institute of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is just an observational study—it can't determine causation—and it only looked at the one county. But, the authors argue, the data begs for follow-up.

[...] The correlation doesn't mean that the insurance coverage caused the change, the authors stress. And even if it did, it's not clear from the data how insurance affected cardiac arrest rates. It's possible that with improved diagnoses and preventative care, heart health could improve in this age range. Interventions like smoking cessation programs and medications for cholesterol and atherosclerosis could all improve health, the authors speculate. But more and larger studies are needed to determine if this is true.

Ars Technica coverage: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/after-aca-arrived-in-an-oregon-county-there-was-a-17-drop-in-cardiac-arrest/
The study in question: http://jaha.ahajournals.org/content/6/7/e005667

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Bryan Lunduke at Network World calls out what other mainstream media have been too timid, or bought out, to call out. He starts by pointing out that choosing Microsoft Windows for your organization should get you fired and that if you haven't already replaced Windows, across the board, you absolutely stink at your job.

There. Finally the topic is broached in mainstream media and a proper discussion can now start among decision makers who can arrange complete migrations to GNU/Linux, Chrome/Linux, one of the BSDs, or a combination of them.

As Microsoft security problems continue to escalate since even the pre-networked, MS-DOS days, managers and front-line grunts will find themselves increasingly culpable for selecting unviable software, such as Microsoft Windows. If they wish to pay big bucks for maintenance, there are plenty of companies around to participate in the money. Canonical, Red Hat, M:Tier are just a sampling.

[Ed. Note: I debated whether or not to run this story — in some respects it's just the Windows vs *nix argument all over again. Also, there are proprietary programs which are critical for certain industries which currently only run on Windows. On the other hand, gaining a mention like this in the more mainstream media, does that mean we are approaching an inflection point? Witness the increased displeasure with Windows 10's telemetry and the difficulty in completely blocking it. What programs do you use that are only available on Windows? What keeps you from moving to another OS? --martyb]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-trump.html

American officials have seen chemical weapons activity at a Syrian air base that was used in the spring nerve gas attack on rebel-held territory, the Defense Department said on Tuesday, scrambling to explain what prompted a White House statement a day earlier that Syria would "pay a heavy price" if it carried out another one.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that what looked like active preparations for a chemical attack were seen at Al Shayrat airfield, which was struck in April by American cruise missiles two days after the Syrian government dropped bombs loaded with toxic chemicals in northern Syria. Another Defense Department official said that an aircraft shelter at Al Shayrat that had been hit by an American Tomahawk missile was being used for the preparation.

Syrian and Russian officials rejected the accusation, calling the White House statement a provocation.

Also at NBC and The Hill.

Original Submission

Joe writes:

Dr. Lowe, from In The Pipeline, wrote Parkinson's As An Autoimmune Disease: More Evidence:

For many complex diseases, you'll find that there are a couple of hypotheses floating around them that are hard to prove and hard to disprove: one is that they're actually caused by some (as yet unrecognized) infectious agent, and the other is that that they're actually an autoimmune/inflammatory disorder. You can also recognize that these two can have features in common, as seen in something like Guillian-Barré syndrome, where a (usually innocuous and often hardly noticed) viral infection or other stimulus can lead to a sudden autoimmune crisis. A whole list of conditions have had such explanations attached to them, more or less persuasively: Alzheimer's, obesity, various forms of arthritis (with little doubt on the autoimmune side), diabetes (Type I, certainly, but even Type II), multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's, and more. Those links lead mainly to autoimmune explanations, but infectious-agent hypotheses are found quite easily as well, and going back many years.

A new paper adds what might be strong evidence to the Parkinson's explanation. It's been known for some time that there's an association between the disease and MHC (major histocompatibility complex) alleles although (at the same time) having another autoimmune disease doesn't seem to raise the risk for Parkinson's itself. That's interesting, in that the brain has mostly been thought of as an "immunoprivileged" compartment, but it's also been increasingly clear that this doctrine is not as solid as it might be.

From the research article:

Approximately 40% of the participants with Parkinson's disease in our cohort exhibited immune responses to α-syn epitopes, and these responses may reflect variations in disease progression or environmental factors. The fraction of patients who display these responses in classic autoimmune disorders such as type-1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis is often around 20–50%. As with type-1 diabetes, which features epitopes that are derived from both preproinsulin and additional proteins, it may be that epitopes related to Parkinson's disease are derived from α-syn and additional proteins.

In short, the researchers found that the immune system in patients with Parkinson's disease can recognize the protein associated with it and induce a response that will kill neurons. If Parkinson's disease is autoimmune, then current therapies for other autoimmune diseases may also be relevant for Parkinson's disease.

Research Article: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v546/n7660/full/nature22815.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease

Previous discussion of Multiple Sclerosis treatment: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/06/13/1038232

Original Submission

Appalbarry writes:

A small Victory in Hamilton, Ontario where the City has backed off on plans to start recording all of the various security and traffic cameras in the city; handing the video over to Microsoft for analysis. Local city hall watching site The Public Record pointed out that this plan would likely run afoul of Ontario's privacy legislation, and convinced the City not to go ahead with the plan.

The City announced in early June that it would begin transferring video to Microsoft for analysis.

Microsoft is working to build software which recognizes cars, bus, trucks, bicycles, and pedestrians. Using the video, and crowd sourced analysis, Microsoft hoped to improve its software for detecting near collisions.

The City hoped to use the software to gain insight into intersections which could use design improvements to decrease the number and severity of collisions as part of its "Vision Zero" efforts.

Immediately upon learning the City would be recording video from the intersection cameras, The Public Record looked into the privacy implications of the recording.

The Privacy Commissioner replied "We encourage institutions to consult our publication, Guidelines for the Use of Video Surveillance (pdf), and our Video Surveillance (pdf)fact sheet, which outline important issues to consider when implementing video surveillance technologies and how to use them in ways that protect individual privacy. Since the City's project also seems to include 'analytics' of video data, you may also be interested in our publication, Big Data Guidelines (pdf), which addresses the issue of data analytics and privacy."

So, it appears that you can fight City Hall!

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The highest court of the European Union ruled [last week] that courts can consider whether a vaccination led to someone developing an illness even when there is no scientific proof.

The decision was issued on Wednesday in relation to the case of a Frenchman known as Mr. J.W., who was immunized against hepatitis B in late 1998-99. About a year later, Mr. J.W. was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. In 2006, he and his family sued vaccine-maker Sanofi Pasteur in an attempt to be compensated for the damage they claim he suffered due to the vaccine. Mr. J.W. died in 2011.

France's Court of Appeal ruled there was no causal link between the hepatitis B vaccine and multiple sclerosis, and dismissed the case. Numerous studies have found no relationship between the hepatitis B shot and multiple sclerosis.

[...] the EU's top court said that despite the lack of scientific consensus on the issue, a vaccine could be considered defective if there was "specific and consistent evidence," including the time between a vaccine's administration and the onset of a disease, an individual's previous state of health, the lack of any family history of the disease and a significant number of reported cases of the disease occurring following vaccination.

[...] Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrician and vaccines expert at the University of Pennsylvania, said the criteria used by the court made no sense — and are similar to those used by vaccine injury compensation programs in the United States.

"Using those criteria, you could reasonably make the case that someone should be compensated for developing leukemia after eating a peanut butter sandwich," he said.

https://www.apnews.com/b0dd5e7933564f45bd3f4d55eedd40ae/EU-court:-Vaccines-can-be-blamed-for-problems-without-proof
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_B
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sclerosis

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Individuals in polyamorous relationships report more commitment and investment with their primary partners and report more time spent on sex with their secondary partners, a new study authored by Western researchers has found.

While previous research suggests that consensually non-monogamous relationships do not significantly differ from monogamous relationships on a number of relationship-quality indicators, this is one of the first studies to examine potential differences in the relationship dynamics between an individual's multiple partners, said lead author Rhonda Balzarini, a PhD candidate in the Psychology.

The authors asked 1,308 people in online questionnaires (drawn from polyamorous affinity groups on social media) about the dynamics of their polyamorous relationships.

"The study suggests people who are 'primary' partners – those who share a household and finances, for example – experience greater commitment and investment in the relationship. However, the secondary partnership experiences greater proportion of time spent on sex, and this remains a factor even when we account for relationship length and living arrangements," she said.

Does this explain why kings and sultans had harems?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A year after failing to acquire Office Depot, Staples is being bought:

On Wednesday, it [Sycamore Partners] agreed to acquire Staples Inc. for about $6.9 billion in one of the largest retail deals of the year, a wager that the office-supply chain can re-emerge as a modern seller of business services.

[...] Sycamore, saying it was attracted to Staples' "iconic brand," is paying $10.25 a share for the retailer, according to a statement on Wednesday. That represents a 12 percent premium to its share price on Tuesday, before reports surfaced that the transaction was close to be being completed.

The deal caps more than a year of turmoil for Staples, which was thwarted in an attempt to make its own acquisition in May 2016. The company had tried to purchase Office Depot Inc. in a $6.3 billion deal that would have unified the two largest office-supply sellers, but the transaction was opposed by antitrust regulators.

Related: Staples and Office Depot Merger Attempt Faces Regulatory Scrutiny

Original Submission