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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Julian Assange has exposed an apparent attempt by the US intelligence apparatus to undermine funding to WikiLeaks, using institutions he established for the express purpose of protecting potential donors from the authorities.

In a Twitter thread, posted Sunday, Assange alleges "politically induced financial censorship" that violates not only US donors' First Amendment rights but also their right to freedom of association. "US donors are the majority of our donor base," Assange wrote, as he nears the conclusion of what will be his eighth year of exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

https://www.rt.com/usa/413524-assange-wikileaks-financial-blockade/

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Microsoft plans to integrate the command line tools tar and curl in the next feature update of Windows 10, out in March 2018.

While we don't know the full name of the next feature update yet, it is clear that it will feature major improvements and additions unlike the rather bleak Fall Creators Update.

Microsoft did mention previously that it plans to publish a major update and later on in the year another update that refines it (see Too many Windows 10 feature updates for an opinion piece on that release strategy).

It is pretty clear though that Microsoft is turning Windows 10 into a jack of all trades system. After adding SSH client and server support in the Fall Creators Update, it now revealed that tar and curl support are coming to Windows 10 as well.

Linux users may shrug their shoulders at this point as the two command line tools have been part of Linux for a long time.

Source: https://www.ghacks.net/2017/12/21/windows-10-tar-and-curl-support/

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42473607

A suspicious package that turned out to contain horse manure sparked a bomb scare near the Los Angeles home of US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, reports say.

The gift-wrapped manure was found at 19:40 (03:40 GMT) at the home next to Mr Mnuchin's in Bel-Air, police said.

Police cleared the package an hour later and the Secret Service is investigating, CBS said.

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/12/23/horse-manure-addressed-to-steve-mnuchin/

There were a lot of frustrated neighbors. Including Zsa Zsa Gabor's widower.

"We have $50 million homes and we can't move, we can't get out," Prince Frederick von Anhalt, who was trapped for two hours, said. "That's bad, they have to find another way."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-42471045

The world's largest amphibious aircraft, China's AG600, has made a successful one-hour maiden flight.

The plane, roughly the size of a Boeing 737 but with four turboprop engines, lifted off from Zhuhai airport in the southern province of Guangdong.

The plane can carry 50 people and can stay airborne for 12 hours.

It has firefighting and marine rescue duties but also military applications, which could be put to use in the disputed South China Sea region. The AG600, codenamed Kunlong, can reach the southernmost edge of China's territorial claims in the area.

State media Xinhua described the plane as "protector spirit of the sea, islands and reefs".

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

AlterNet reports:

We've been getting Rudolph completely wrong.

For a start, Rudolph and team are probably female. All the images I've seen of Rudolph clearly show a reindeer proudly sporting antlers. Reindeer are the only deer where both sexes grow antlers, but the males lose them around Christmas time and regrow them in the spring, ready for the mating season. The only way a male reindeer can hang on to his magnificent headgear through the festive season is to be castrated. Losing the source of the sex hormones upsets the antler cycle--and probably the reindeer too.

We need to talk about that nose as well. The red glow from Rudolph's most famous attribute is probably caused by something more serious than a bad cold. Reindeer noses are a brilliant product of evolutionary adaptation to a harsh environment. The nasal passages contain many elaborate folds covered in blood vessels. When a reindeer breathes in, the abundant blood vessels warm up the air keeping the inside of the reindeer nice and warm even when the air around it is sub-zero. On the way out, the same blood vessels cool the air, minimising heat loss and retaining as much water vapour as possible.

The unfortunate downside of such an intricate nasal arrangement is that it is a very comfortable spot for parasites to lurk. There are 20 parasites unique to mainland reindeer, and many others that are just as happy in reindeer or other ruminants. That red nose is therefore probably due to parasitic infection and increased blood flow to the area where the body is doing its best to fight off invaders.

The article also addresses flying and mentions magic mushrooms, which we discussed during a previous Yule: How Santa Flies, Fits Down Chimneys, and Does Stuff You Can't Do

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Theranos gets $100 million in debt financing to carry it through 2018, with some caveats

Theranos has secured $100 million in debt financing. Yes, someone gave the blood testing company known for handing out questionable test results money.

First reported by Business Insider, the company reportedly told investors it had secured the money from Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based private equity firm that was acquired by Softbank earlier this year.

Of course, this is debt financing, not equity and Theranos will surely need it as it has been bleeding money, laying off more than half its workforce this year and trying to come up with ways to keep it afloat.

Previously: Theranos Introduces New Product to Distract from Scandal
Theranos Lays Off 340, Closes Labs and "Wellness Centers"

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canopic jug writes:

Right from the beginning, games were a component of the commercial online services that predated the World Wide Web; both The Source and CompuServe included them among their offerings from the moment those services first went online. In the early years, such online games were mostly refugees from 1970s institutional computing. Classics like Star Trek, Adventure, and Hammurabi had the advantage of being in the public domain and already running without modification on the time-shared computer systems which hosted the services, and could thus be made available to subscribers with a minimum of investment. Eventually even some text-only microcomputer games made the transition. By 1984, CompuServe, now well-established at the vanguard of the burgeoning online-services industry, had a catalog that included the original Adventure along with an expanded version, nine Scott Adams games, and the original PDP-10 Zork (renamed for some reason to The House of Banshi). And those were just the text adventures. There were also the dungeon crawls Dungeons of Kesmai and Castle Telengard and the war games Civil War, Fantasy, and Command Decision, while for the less hardcore there were the CompuServe Casino, board games like Reversi, and curiosities like a biorhythm charter and an astrology calculator.

• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 1: Strategy and Simulation
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 2: MUD
• Games on the Net Before the Web, Part 3: The Persistent Multiplayer CRPG

Original Submission

takyon writes:

On December 21, the U.S.-based online dating site OkCupid announced that it would begin to phase out usernames in place of real names, or more accurately, "what [users] want their dates to call them". The "flippant" announcement post made fun of several (slightly edited) usernames that had been in use. Users have not reacted positively to the change:

Days after deleting an OKCupid profile that included personal information, Reddit user Drinkscocoaandreads logged onto Facebook to find an unpleasant surprise. "I had like three guys find me on Facebook within two days, screaming at me for leaving mid-conversation/not ever acknowledging their initial message," the Redditor wrote in a thread about OKCupid. "One of them also added a few of my friends before I figured out what was happening and got him blocked."

Drinkscocoaandreads is one of many Reddit users reacting to OKCupid's recent announcement that it will ditch usernames in favor of a real-name policy. "It's because, like the recent goodbye we said to AIM screen names, it's time to keep up with the times," OKCupid explained. "We've also heard from many members of our community that they want to maintain the privacy they enjoy with usernames—with this change, we won't be collecting full names; instead, we encourage our users to go by the name they'd like their dates to call them on OkCupid."

Via email, a company spokesperson told The Verge that OKCupid won't require legal names, but the shift is already unpopular with users. Online, the reaction to the news has been overwhelmingly negative, with users either flocking to Reddit to discuss the change, or leaving angry comments on the post itself.

The change isn't just, as OKCupid's flippant post suggests, about users no longer going by aliases like "BigDaddyFlash916." The allure of a place like OKCupid as opposed to, say, Tinder, is that it was a secure place to share more intimate personal details, including sexual preferences. Dating apps made for phones are generally looking for users to find matches based on proximity, age, and gut-instinct attraction to other people's photos. OKCupid invites users to answer questionnaires, build elaborate profiles, and describe themselves thoughtfully. For users, this is a double-edged sword: you get to know people better, but you also make yourself vulnerable to strangers who can potentially learn a lot about you.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The drug Gefitinib is used to treat breast, lung, and other cancers by inhibiting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) signaling, but it has only a limited effect on prostate cancer. EGFR, present on the cell membrane, is involved in cell proliferation and the development of dermis, lung, and digestive tissues. When a mutation causes its over-activation, it can lead to increased cell proliferation and tumor formation.

Tadashi Matsuda of Hokkaido University and his colleagues in Japan investigated human prostate cancer cells to determine if there is an unknown up-regulation mechanism in the EGFR pathway.

When EGFR is attached to a small protein called ubiquitin, it is given "the kiss of death" and tagged for degradation inside the cell. This tagging process is facilitated by a protein called c-CBL. The degradation of EGFR leads to less signaling from the receptor and reduced cell proliferation.

Matsuda and his team found that signal-transducing adaptor protein-2 (STAP-2) stabilizes EGFR by inhibiting its c-CBL-mediated ubiquitination. Furthermore, when the team suppressed STAP-2, the prostate cancer cells showed reduced proliferation and did not form a tumor when transplanted into mice.

"STAP-2 inhibitors could play a role in treating Gefitinib-resistant prostate cancers. Further studies on STAP-2 will provide new insights into cancer physiology and support the development of anticancer therapies," says Tadashi Matsuda. The study was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Several of the programs Snowden revealed are authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. The 2008 law was scheduled to sunset on December 31, but in a last-ditch effort Thursday, Congress extend its authority through January 19.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, believes that the authorization doesn't really expire until April, leaving lawmakers several months to either reform or strengthen the provision. Hanging in the balance is the legal framework the government largely relies on to conduct mass surveillance of foreigners, and Americans who communicate with them. Which makes it all the more concerning that the fight over Section 702's future has taken place largely in the dark.

Source : Congress Is Debating Warrantless Surveillance in the Dark

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

It is by far the most abundant river in the world. One fifth of the Earth's entire freshwater supply flows from its mouth into the Atlantic pushing the ocean's salt water several hundred kilometers out to sea. In April, Andrea Koschinsky, Professor of Geochemistry at Jacobs University, will travel to the estuary of the Amazon – as head of a recently approved, interdisciplinary research project on board the research ship, Meteor.

The Amazon River is almost 7,000 km long and is not only tremendously abundant but it also transports large quantities of trace metals such as iron and copper and dissolved organic materials. It is these materials that interest the team comprising Andrea Koschinsky, Prof. Thorsten Dittmar from the University of Oldenburg and Prof. Martin Frank from GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel as well as the four Brazilian partner organizations.

"We want to gain a better understanding of the material cycle in the ocean," says Andrea Koschinsky about the M 147 research trip's aims. "We will only be able to reliably predict the human impact on this cycle if we succeed in this". Trace elements such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus play an important role in the ocean as they are essential elements for the formation of biomass. However, all life needs iron – even the smallest marine organism requires it.

The Amazon River carries many elements into the sea, including iron. Part of the elements flocculate when the freshwater meets the salt water and mixes, they drop down and settle on the bottom of the river mouth as sediment. However, another part remains in the water and forms part of the material cycle in the ocean. On their research trip, the scientists want to find out exactly how these processes work, their interdependencies, interactions and quantities. Their focus is on the flow of iron as well as other important trace elements and organic molecules.

The scientists will take the first water samples from the river where the freshwater is the purest. The ship will then follow the course of the river via the brackish salt water and freshwater water system until its keel reaches the pure seawater. Sediment samples will taken from the seabed, from the river at a depth of up to 100 m and from the sea at a depth of up to 2,000 m.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google has hired one of the key designers behind Apple's A-series SoCs. Google may be designing custom ARM chips for its own products:

A recent report from The Information details Google's efforts to grow its chip development efforts, which in turn is costing Apple some considerable talent. The report explains that Google has hired several key chip engineers from Apple, including well-regarded chip designer John Bruno.

At Apple, Bruno was responsible for the silicon competitive analysis group. This group is Apple's way of ensuring it stays ahead of other chipmakers in terms of performance. Bruno also served at AMD and was one of the lead developers of the Fusion processors for PCs.

Bruno has confirmed the move on his LinkedIn page, where he says he's working as a System Architect at Google. He served at Apple for five years and joined Google just this month. [...] Today's report also notes that Google has hired Wonjae (Gregory) Choi and Tayo Fadelu from Apple, as well as engineers from Qualcomm.

Also at Engadget and Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

A digital archive of BYTE Magazine covering 1975 through 1995 is online now at the Internet Archive. BYTE was a very influential magazine its first decades and included articles and columns on both hardware and software, basically everything in the topic of small computers and software. A broad range of operating systems were addressed as well. Any of the programming languages available at the time were regularly covered, Smalltalk, Lisp, Logo, basically anything. And of course source samples and occasionally whole programs were included. It basically lead in the era of hands-on computing.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Unregulated herpes experiments expose 'black hole' of accountability

Recent revelations that a U.S. researcher injected Americans with his experimental herpes vaccine without routine safety oversight raised an uproar among scientists and ethicists. Not only did Southern Illinois University researcher William Halford vaccinate Americans offshore, he injected other participants in U.S. hotel rooms without Food and Drug Administration oversight or even a medical license. Since then, several participants have complained of side effects.

But don't expect the disclosures after Halford's death in June to trigger significant institutional changes or government response, research experts say. "A company, university or agency generally does not take responsibility or take action on their own to help participants, even if they're hurt in the trial," said Carl Elliott, a professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota. "These types of cases are really a black hole in terms of accountability." The federal government once scrutinized or even froze research at universities after learning of such controversies. Now, experts said, the oversight agencies tend to avoid action even in the face of the most outrageous abuses.

Experts said the U.S. regulatory agencies are especially unprepared to deal with off-the-grid experiments like Halford's. He recruited subjects through Facebook and in some cases didn't require signed consent forms, or informed participants outright that the experiments flouted FDA oversight. These patients, many who struggle with chronic, painful herpes, proceeded anyway in their quest for a cure. After Halford's offshore trial, Peter Thiel, a libertarian and adviser to President Donald Trump, pitched in millions of dollars for future research.

Previously: Hopes of Extended Lifespans Using Transfusions of Young People's Blood
University Could Lose Millions From "Unethical" Research Backed by Peter Thiel

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Surgery For Saving Babies From 'Water On The Brain' Developed in Uganda

Traditionally doctors treat hydrocelphalus in the U.S. with what's called a shunt: They place a long tube in the baby's brain, which allows the liquid to drain into the child's stomach. But a third of the time, these shunts fail within two years, says Dr. Jay Riva-Cambrin, a neurosurgeon at the University of Calgary. "Imagine buying a car and having the dealer tell you, 'By the way, there's a 40 percent chance the car won't be on the road in two years.' You'd be like 'No way.' "

That failure rate is tolerable here in the U.S. because children can be rushed quickly to a hospital for emergency surgery to fix the shunt, says Dr. Benjamin Warf, a neurosurgeon at Harvard Medical School, who led the development of the new method at a clinic in Mbale, Uganda. "Some kids wind up having dozens of these shunt operations over over[sic] the years," he says. But for many kids in rural Uganda — and other poor countries — emergency neurosurgery isn't an option. "They're going to die from a shunt malfunction," Warf says. "I can't put a shunt in a baby and then send them back to a rural village in western Uganda or southern Sudan because it would take days to return to the clinic."

So Warf and his colleagues decided to innovate. They took a technique that works in adults and then tweaked it a bit so that it would have a better chance of working with babies. In the new method, doctors basically poke a hole in the brain's chambers so they can drain. They also prevented the chambers from filling back up by partially damaging the region of the brain that produces spinal fluid.

The team knew the procedure fixed the hydrocephalus. They could see that the babies' brains stopped swelling. But the big question was whether or not the method could prevent brain damage as effectively as shunting does. After 15 years of testing and optimizing, he and his team can finally say that their approach — at least in the short term — appears to be just as effective as the procedure commonly used here in the U.S. In the study, Warf and his colleagues tested the two methods on about 100 children in Uganda. After 12 months, the doctors couldn't detect a difference in the children's brain volume or cognitive skills.

Hydrocephalus.

Endoscopic Treatment versus Shunting for Infant Hydrocephalus in Uganda (open, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1707568) (DX)

Original Submission