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Fnord666 writes:

In a new study conducted with the UCSF [University of California, San Francisco] Department of Medicine, a neural network developed by a startup called Cardiogram was able to detect diabetes with nearly 85 percent accuracy, just by looking at people's heart beats over time. And the kicker? As always, the study didn't require any fancy medical hardware — just Apple Watches, Fitbits, Android Wear devices, and other wearables with heart rate sensors.

"It's the hardest thing I've ever worked on, but the most rewarding," Cardiogram co-founder Brandon Ballinger told Engadget. (Coming from someone who helped overhaul Healthcare.gov, that's saying something.)

Cardiogram has conducted similar studies in the past, like when it trained that neural network — DeepHeart — to search for telltale signs of strokes in a pool of roughly 6,000 users. This undertaking required even more work. For the new study, which also attempted to spot high cholesterol, sleep apnea and hypertension in that sea of heartbeats, the startup worked with a larger pool of 14,011 users. All told, Cardiogram wound up with 57,675 person-weeks of heart rate information, most of which was used to hone DeepHeart's sense of what is and isn't a normal heartbeat pattern.

[...] To be clear, though, DeepHeart wasn't designed to diagnose diabetes. As sophisticated as the algorithm is, the link between the diabetes and its effects on your heart rate is a subtle one, and making crystal clear determinations using consumer-grade heart sensors isn't possible yet. Instead, Ballinger says the goal is to help screen for diabetes in people who otherwise had no idea they were at risk for it. The potential impact is huge, too: the CDC reports that more than 100 million adults in the United States live with either diabetes or prediabetes. And out of the people who have diabetes, roughly 25 percent of them don't even know about it.

The kind of diabetic pre-screening DeepHeart makes possible will eventually wind up in Cardiogram's app, though Ballinger wouldn't confirm when that would actually happen. As valuable as this potential tool is, though, the company hasn't ruled out the possibility of eventually offering full-blown diagnoses too.

"If the Apple Watch Series 5 winds up having a glucose sensor or a blood pressure sensor, we could actually do it," Ballinger said.

Source: Engadget

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Fnord666 writes:

Tesla had aimed to do a cross-country U.S. drive in one of its vehicles using fully autonomous driving capabilities by the end of last year. Obviously it didn't make that goal, or you'd have heard about it. Instead, Tesla CEO Elon Musk now says he anticipates being able to make the trip within three months, or six months at the long end.

Specifically, Musk said on an earnings call in response to a question about the autonomous drive that they'd "probably" be able to "do a coast-to-coast drive in three months, six months at the outside." When asked whether this feature would then be immediately available to customers, he did say that it "will be a feature that's available to customers," without commenting directly on timing of availability.

Musk admitted that he'd "missed the mark on that front," regarding the original autonomous drive demonstration, but he qualified that Tesla "could've done the coast-to-coast drive [last year] but that the company "would've had to do too much custom code, effectively gaming it." It would've resulted in a feature that others could have used in their vehicles as well, but only for that exact cross-country route.

Source: TechCrunch

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-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

AlterNet reports

[...] researchers linked air pollution to 6.5 million premature deaths in 2015, [...] so scientists around the world are seeking ways to thwart this ongoing problem.

One such solution, publicized last year by a pair of Belgian universities, has the potential to destroy pollutants before they enter the environment, with an added bonus: clean energy production.

The prototype device, designed by the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven[1], is only a few centimeters in size, but with further development, it could one day fight some of the most dangerous man-made pollutants on an industrial scale while producing [a clean fuel].

[...] The Belgian research teams created a small device with two [chambers] separated by a membrane. Air is purified on one side, and the degradation of pollutants produces hydrogen gas, which is stored on the other side.

The technology is based on the use of specific nanomaterials in a process called photocatalysis, [Professor Sammy] Verbruggen told AlterNet by phone. "[The process] uses a semiconductor that is irradiated by light energy to generate free charge carriers. These charge carriers, in turn, produce reactive oxygen species that can attack fouling components."

Specifically, the device can eliminate any organic compound--which includes pesticides like DDT, as well as industrial pollutants such as dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Many of these organic pollutants are particularly concerning because they "bio-magnify throughout the food chain and bio-accumulate in organisms", according to the World Health Organization.

As pollutants are broken down, "protons are extracted from the molecules and migrate to another compartment of the device, where they are reduced to hydrogen gas", Verbruggen explained. Cell devices like this are most commonly used to extract hydrogen from water, but it turns out the process is even more efficient with polluted air--which is a huge revelation. "It's actually easier to perform these reactions with fouled components rather than pure water."

[...] Rather than vacuum pollution from dirty city air, the device is better suited to capture waste gases before they ever enter the environment. When mounted at a manufacturing facility, for example, the device could passively capture and eliminate volatile organic compounds that would otherwise be emitted or flared off--while producing hydrogen gas that can be converted into electricity onsite via a fuel cell.

[...] Verbruggen told us, "We are now working on several prototypes that are more easily manufactured with cheaper materials, and we're also investigating some alternative materials that can interact better with sunlight. As soon as we have a suitable combination of both, then we can start thinking about the next step, which is upscaling to larger dimensions."

The device only needs light to function, but it will need to absorb light energy far more efficiently to be viable on a larger scale.

[1] Katholieke Universiteit Lueven

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Fnord666 writes:

Days ago, South Korean authorities announced that they'd capture any drone that got too close to Olympics event facilities. If you have a DJI-made craft, you won't even be able to get close. The UAV maker is releasing a software patch that creates a no-fly zone around Olympic areas.

For the duration of the games, DJI drones won't be able to fly through areas in the South Korean cities of Pyeongchang, Gangneung, Bongpyeong and Jeongseon.

"Safety is DJI's top priority and we've always taken proactive steps to educate our customers to operate within the law and where appropriate, implement temporary no-fly zones during major events," the company said in a statement, according to TechCrunch. "We believe this feature will reduce the potential for drone operations that could inadvertently create safety or security concerns."

Source: Engadget

Related: DJI introduced new software to stop its drones from flying in restricted airspace.
DJI Will Ground Drones If They Don't Apply a Software Update

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Fnord666 writes:

Bug bounty programs are designed to sic security researchers on software and pay them to find vulnerabilities and report back to the sponsor. In return, the researchers are richly rewarded for their findings. In fact, Google's bug bounty paid out a hefty $2.9 million in bug bounties in 2017.

Rewards can range from $500 to $100,000 or more depending on the type of bug and the amount of time spent. There are a number of programs, including the Vulnerability Research Grants Program and Patch Rewards Program. The former paid out a total of $125,000 to 50 researchers around the world in 2017, while the latter paid a total of $50,000 to improve security in open-source software.

The largest award of the year was $112,500, a nice chunk of change, for tracking down a Pixel phone exploit as part of the Android Security Rewards Program. This is serious money, and bug bounty hunters serve a key role in the software security ecosystem, helping to ferret out some of the worst vulnerabilities before hackers can exploit them.

Source: TechCrunch

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takyon writes:

Uber is just too underhanded to play the underdog against Waymo

The most remarkable thing about Waymo v. Uber is that so many of the people following the lawsuit are essentially rooting for Google to crush a smaller firm with a lawsuit. It's a tale as old as time: a maverick upstart galls a bigger, more established competitor, and the bigger guy strikes back in the courts. It's practically an American fairy tale, and yet Uber's lawyers are hard-pressed to get this archetypal narrative to stick. Nobody sees Uber as the underdog.

For one thing, through a collision of multiple scandals, Uber has become extraordinarily unpopular, and the discovery process in this lawsuit hasn't done much to alleviate its reputation as an unethical, underhanded company. But the other part is that the supposed maverick upstart hasn't managed to get one over the complacent megacorporation.

Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says that Google is (and was) in the lead when it comes to self-driving cars.

Charles Verhoeven, lead attorney for Waymo, ended his questioning of Kalanick by asking him about a note that said, "Cheat codes. Find them. Use them."

When Waymo attorney Charles Verhoeven took over again to interrogate him, he returned to cheat codes. "In the context of video games, you know what a cheat code is?"

"Yes," Kalanick replied. "But those codes in those games are put there on purpose by the publisher of the games and they want the players to have them. It's part of the fun of the game."

"That's just the game," he added, before Verhoeven could continue.

Verhoeven tried again, "A cheat code allows you to skip ahead, allows you to skip a level and not do the work."

"No — " Kalanick began to say, before Verhoeven quickly turned to the judge and said, "That's it, your honor." And with that, Travis Kalanick exited the courtroom.

Verhoeven was also able to play the "Greed is Good" scene from the 1987 film Wall Street for the jury because Anthony Levandowski (the engineer accused of stealing trade secrets from Waymo) had sent a link to it to Kalanick.

Previously: Text Messages Between Uber's Travis Kalanick and Anthony Levandowski Released
Waymo's Case Against Uber "Shrinks" After Trade Secret Claim Thrown Out
Uber v. Waymo Trial Delayed Because Uber Withheld Evidence
A Spectator Who Threw A Wrench In The Waymo/Uber Lawsuit
Waymo v. Uber Jury Trial Begins

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/john-perry-barlow-internet-pioneer-1947-2018

With a broken heart I have to announce that EFF's founder, visionary, and our ongoing inspiration, John Perry Barlow, passed away quietly in his sleep this morning. We will miss Barlow and his wisdom for decades to come, and he will always be an integral part of EFF.

It is no exaggeration to say that major parts of the Internet we all know and love today exist and thrive because of Barlow’s vision and leadership. He always saw the Internet as a fundamental place of freedom, where voices long silenced can find an audience and people can connect with others regardless of physical distance.

Barlow was sometimes held up as a straw man for a kind of naive techno-utopianism that believed that the Internet could solve all of humanity's problems without causing any more. As someone who spent the past 27 years working with him at EFF, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth. Barlow knew that new technology could create and empower evil as much as it could create and empower good. He made a conscious decision to focus on the latter: "I knew it’s also true that a good way to invent the future is to predict it. So I predicted Utopia, hoping to give Liberty a running start before the laws of Moore and Metcalfe delivered up what Ed Snowden now correctly calls 'turn-key totalitarianism.'”

Barlow’s lasting legacy is that he devoted his life to making the Internet into “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth . . . a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.”

In the days and weeks to come, we will be talking and writing more about what an extraordinary role Barlow played for the Internet and the world. And as always, we will continue the work to fulfill his dream.

Fake News Sharing in US is a Right-Wing Thing, Says Study

NewNic writes:

A study by researchers at Oxford University concluded that sharing fake and junk news is much more prevalent amongst Trump supporters and other people with hard right-wing tendencies.

From the Guardian:

The study, from the university's "computational propaganda project", looked at the most significant sources of "junk news" shared in the three months leading up to Donald Trump's first State of the Union address this January, and tried to find out who was sharing them and why.

"On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share," the researchers concluded. On Facebook, the skew was even greater. There, "extreme hard right pages – distinct from Republican pages – share more junk news than all the other audiences put together.

Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US

An Anonymous Coward writes:

What kinds of social media users read junk news? We examine the distribution of the most significant sources of junk news in the three months before President Donald Trump's first State of the Union Address. Drawing on a list of sources that consistently publish political news and information that is extremist, sensationalist, conspiratorial, masked commentary, fake news and other forms of junk news, we find that the distribution of such content is unevenly spread across the ideological spectrum. We demonstrate that (1) on Twitter, a network of Trump supporters shares the widest range of known junk news sources and circulates more junk news than all the other groups put together; (2) on Facebook, extreme hard right pages—distinct from Republican pages—share the widest range of known junk news sources and circulate more junk news than all the other audiences put together; (3) on average, the audiences for junk news on Twitter share a wider range of known junk news sources than audiences on Facebook's public pages.

http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/polarization-partisanship-and-junk-news/

[Ed. note: page is loading very slowly; try a direct link to the actual report (pdf). --martyb]

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Fnord666 writes:

The FCC has released a new report falsely claiming that the agency's attack on net neutrality is already paying huge dividends when it comes to sector investment and competition.

Unfortunately for the FCC, the data the agency is relying on to "prove" this claim comes from before current FCC boss Ajit Pai even took office and doesn't remotely support that conclusion.

Under the Telecommunications Act, the FCC is required to issue annual reports on the state of broadband competition and deployment in the U.S. market. Should the FCC find that broadband isn't being deployed in a "reasonable and timely fashion," it's required to craft policies that address the problem.

Unfortunately, when the FCC is under the control of revolving door regulators loyal to industry, they have a tendency to massage the data to help suggest things are rosier than they actually are. After all, it's easier to justify apathy to a lack of sector competition if the FCC is able to massage data to suggest the problem doesn't exist.

Story at Motherboard

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Grammarly has fixed a security bug in its Chrome extension that inadvertently allowed access to a user's account -- including their private documents and data.

Tavis Ormandy, a security researcher at Google's Project Zero who found the "high severity" vulnerability, said the browser extension exposed authentication tokens to all websites.

That means any website can access a user's documents, history, logs, and other data, the bug report said.

"I'm calling this a high severity bug, because it seems like a pretty severe violation of user expectations," said Ormandy, because "users would not expect that visiting a website gives it permission to access documents or data they've typed into other websites."

In proof-of-concept code, he explained how to trigger the bug in four lines of code.

More than 22 million users have installed the grammar-checking extension.

[...] In a statement, a spokesperson for Grammarly confirmed the bug is fixed.

"At this time, Grammarly has no evidence that any user information was compromised by this issue. We're continuing to monitor actively for any unusual activity," the spokesperson said.

Story at ZDNet

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The ozone layer may be recovering above Antarctica, but not over the equator:

Thirty years after nations banded together to phase out chemicals that destroy stratospheric ozone, the gaping hole in the earth's ultraviolet (UV) radiation shield above Antarctica is shrinking. But new findings suggest that at mid-latitudes, where most people live, the ozone layer in the lower stratosphere is growing more tenuous--for reasons that scientists are struggling to fathom.

"I don't want people to panic or get overly worried," says William Ball, an atmospheric physicist at the Physikalisch-Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos World Radiation Centre in Switzerland. "But there is something happening in the lower stratosphere that's important to understand."

Several recent studies, including one published last month in Geophysical Research Letters, point to a robust recovery of stratospheric ozone concentrations over Antarctica--the long-awaited payoff after the Montreal Protocol in 1987 mandated a global phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-eating compounds.

But recent evidence indicates that the global campaign to mend the ozone layer is far from over. In an analysis published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Ball and colleagues combined satellite data to examine ozone at mid-latitudes, from Earth's surface on up through the troposphere and the stratosphere. They found that from 1998 to 2016, ozone in the lower stratosphere ebbed by 2.2 Dobson units--a measure of ozone thickness--even as concentrations in the upper stratosphere rose by about 0.8 Dobson units. "We saw it at almost every latitude and every altitude below about 25 kilometers," Ball says. "That made us very concerned that perhaps this was something very real that no one looked at before."

Also at the Imperial College London and Newsweek.

Evidence for a continuous decline in lower stratospheric ozone offsetting ozone layer recovery (open, DOI: 10.5194/acp-18-1379-2018) (DX)

Decline in Antarctic Ozone Depletion and Lower Stratospheric Chlorine Determined From Aura Microwave Limb Sounder Observations (DOI: 10.1002/2017GL074830) (DX)

Previously: Ozone Layer Hole at its Smallest Size Since 1988

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Washington, DC—American Atheists expressed outrage today at the drastic changes implemented by the Trump administration that will further elevate religious beliefs above the law.

Without any substantive public announcement, the administration made changes to the policy manuals for U.S. Attorneys’ offices and Department of Justice (DOJ) litigation offices. These offices are now required to assign a staff member to monitor all litigation and immediately inform high-ranking political appointees at DOJ whenever the offices are subject to a lawsuit involving religious liberty, when religious liberty is used as a defense in litigation, or when the offices file a suit involving religious issues.

These changes also require U.S. Attorneys and litigation offices to seek the approval of the Associate Attorney General—who is a political appointee—before proceeding with any civil suit that may involve religious liberty issues. By doing so, the Trump administration is favoring religious beliefs above all other matters, and is eroding the independence of these offices by allowing a political appointee to overrule the judgment of career DOJ attorneys.

"This is a breathtaking expansion of religious privilege in the DOJ," said American Atheists' legal and policy director Alison Gill. "These policy changes significantly undermine the rule of law and favor religious beliefs at the expense of nondiscrimination and equal protection."

"Requiring the approval of religious political appointees before enforcing the law is something I would expect to see in a theocracy like Iran or Saudi Arabia, but I'm rapidly losing any sense of shock and surprise at the lengths this administration will go to impose the beliefs of religious extremists on all Americans," added David Silverman, president of American Atheists.

This latest attack on religious neutrality comes two weeks after the Trump administration created the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services. This new division is charged with shielding medical professionals who, because of their own religious objections, refuse to treat patients.

Source: https://www.atheists.org/2018/02/doj-religion-czars/

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

The developer conference, FOSDEM 2018, took place in Brussels last weekend on February 3^rd and 4^th. The videos from FOSDEM presentations are now online. FOSDEM is a two-day event organised by volunteers to promote the widespread use of free and open source software. It has taken place every year starting in 2000 and brings in thousands of free and open source software developers from around Europe and the rest of the world.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The AI porn purge continues:

Pornhub will be deleting "deepfakes" — AI-generated videos that realistically edit new faces onto pornographic actors — under its rules against nonconsensual porn, following in the footsteps of platforms like Discord and Gfycat. "We do not tolerate any nonconsensual content on the site and we remove all said content as soon as we are made aware of it," the company told Motherboard, which first reported on the deepfakes porn phenomenon last year. Pornhub says that nonconsensual content includes "revenge porn, deepfakes, or anything published without a person's consent or permission."

Update: The infamous subreddit itself, /r/deepfakes, has been banned by Reddit. /r/CelebFakes and /r/CelebrityFakes have also been banned for their non-AI porn fakery (they had existed for over 7 years). Other subreddits like /r/fakeapp (technical support for the software) and /r/SFWdeepfakes remain intact. Reported at Motherboard, The Verge, and TechCrunch.

Motherboard also reported on some users (primarily on a new subreddit, /r/deepfakeservice) offering to accept commissions to create deepfakes porn. This is seen as more likely to result in a lawsuit:

As you're probably aware we experienced some unplanned downtime today. It has been claimed it was entirely the fault of Russian Hackers. They invaded fluorine and caused the database updating code in rehash to not update the database this last site update. Which is just as well, I suppose, since two of the SQL statements refuse to complete even when run manually. That I'm going to have to chalk up to a misconfigured ndbd on helium and neon.

tl;dr The long and short of it is, we'll be fine until we can get those updates into the database, but it is going to mean more downtime this weekend.

~TMB

CoolHand writes:

From TorrentFreak:

VideoLAN, the team behind the VLC media player, recently revealed that they turned down several tens of millions of euros to bundle their software with advertising. The same cannot be said of third-party developers cloning VLC for profit, however. An ad-supported clone discovered on Google Play has a staggering five to ten million downloads and breaches VLC's GPL license, yet Google refuses to take it down.

[...] Aside from its incredible functionality, VLC (operated by the VideoLAN non-profit) has won the hearts of Internet users for other key reasons, not least its commitment to being free and open source software. While it's true to say that VLC doesn't cost a penny, the term 'free' actually relates to the General Public License (GPL) under which it's distributed.

[...] Since VLC is extremely popular and just about as 'free' as software can get, people get extremely defensive when they perceive that a third-party is benefiting from the software without adhering to the terms of the generous GPL license. That was the case beginning a few hours ago when veteran Reddit user MartinVanBallin pointed out a piece of software on the Google Play Store.

"They took VLC, put in ads, didn't attribute VLC or follow the open source license, and they're using Media Player Classics icon," MartinVanBallin wrote.

Update: The app is no longer on Google Play.

Original Submission