SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

RF-powered computers are small devices that compute and communicate using only the power that they harvest from RF signals. While existing technologies have harvested power from ambient RF sources (e.g., TV broadcasts), they require a dedicated gateway (like an RFID reader) for Internet connectivity. We present Wi-Fi Backscatter, a novel communication system that bridges RF-powered devices with the Internet. Specifically, we show that it is possible to reuse existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to provide Internet connectivity to RF-powered devices.

From the PDF:

[W]e seek to design RF-powered devices that communicate directly with commodity Wi-Fi devices. A positive answer would pave the way for a rapid and simple deployment of the RF-powered Internet of Things by letting these devices connect to existing mobile phones and Wi-Fi APs. It would also expand the functionality of Wi-Fi networks in a new direction: from providing connectivity to existing Wi-Fi clients to a whole new class of battery-free devices.

Achieving this capability, however, is challenging since conventional low-power Wi-Fi transceivers require much more power than is available from ambient RF signals. Thus, it is not feasible for RF-powered devices to literally speak the Wi-Fi protocol. Conversely, since existing Wi-Fi devices are specifically designed to receive Wi-Fi signals, it is unclear how they would decode other kinds of signals from RF-powered devices.

Original Submission

chromas writes:

From Ars Technica:

A mobile application built by a third party for the RSA security conference in San Francisco this week was found to have a few security issues of its own—including hard-coded security keys and passwords that allowed a researcher to extract the conference's attendee list. The conference organizers acknowledged the vulnerability on Twitter, but they say that only the first and last names of 114 attendees were exposed.

The vulnerability was discovered (at least publicly) by a security engineer who tweeted discoveries during an examination of the RSA conference mobile app, which was developed by Eventbase Technology. Within four hours of the disclosure, Eventbase had fixed the data leak—an API call that allowed anyone to download data with attendee information.

[...] This is the second time an RSA mobile application has leaked attendee data. In 2014, an application built by another developer, QuickMobile, was found by Gunter Ollmann (who was that time at IOactive) to have a SQLite database containing personal information on registered attendees.

Also at ITWire.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for fyngyrz

Amazon this morning is introducing "Alexa Blueprints," a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code. The idea is to allow Alexa owners to create their own voice apps, like a trivia game or bedtime stories, or teach Alexa to respond to questions with answers they design – like "Who's the best mom in the world?," for example.

[...] "Alexa Skill Blueprints is an entirely new way for you to teach Alexa personalized skills just for you and your family," explained Steve Rabuchin, Vice President, Amazon Alexa, in a statement about the launch. "You don't need experience building skills or coding to get started—my family created our own jokes skill in a matter of minutes, and it's been a blast to interact with Alexa in a totally new and personal way."

[...] The feature could give Amazon an edge in selling its Echo speakers to consumers, as it's now the only platform offering this level of customization – Apple's HomePod is really designed for music lovers, and doesn't support third-party apps. Google Home also doesn't offer this type of customization.

All three are competing to be the voice assistant people use in their home, but Alexa so far is leading by a wide margin – it still has roughly 70 percent of the smart speaker market.

Source: Amazon's new 'Alexa Blueprints' lets anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) together with colleagues from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA have found a way to write and delete magnets in an alloy using a laser beam - a surprising effect. The reversibility of the process opens up new possibilities in the fields of material processing, optical technology, and data storage.

Researchers of the HZDR, an independent German research laboratory, studied an alloy of iron and aluminum. It is interesting as a prototype material because subtle changes to its atomic arrangement can completely transform its magnetic behavior.

"The alloy possesses a highly ordered structure, with layers of iron atoms that are separated by aluminum atomic layers. When a laser beam destroys this order, the iron atoms are brought closer together and begin to behave like magnets," says HZDR physicist Rantej Bali.

Bali and his team prepared a thin film of the alloy on top of transparent magnesia through which a laser beam was shone on the film. When they, together with researchers of the HZB, directed a well-focused laser beam with a pulse of 100 femtoseconds (a femtosecond is a millionth of a billionth of a second) at the alloy, a ferromagnetic area was formed. Shooting laser pulses at the same area again - this time at reduced laser intensity - was then used to delete the magnet.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An experiment that, by design, was not supposed to turn up anything of note instead produced a "bewildering" surprise, according to the Stanford scientists who made the discovery: a new way of creating gold nanoparticles and nanowires using water droplets.

The technique, detailed April 19 in the journal Nature Communications, is the latest discovery in the new field of on-droplet chemistry and could lead to more environmentally friendly ways to produce nanoparticles of gold and other metals, said study leader Richard Zare, a chemist in the School of Humanities and Sciences and a co-founder of Stanford Bio-X.

"Being able to do reactions in water means you don't have to worry about contamination. It's green chemistry," said Zare, who is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science at Stanford.

[...] Around the mid-1980s, however, scientists discovered that gold's chemical aloofness only manifests at large, or macroscopic, scales. At the nanometer scale, gold particles are very chemically reactive and make excellent catalysts. Today, gold nanostructures have found a role in a wide variety of applications, including bio-imaging, drug delivery, toxic gas detection and biosensors.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Freshwater fish diversity is harmed as much by selective logging in rainforests as they are by complete deforestation, according to a new study.

Researchers had expected the level of damage would rise depending on the amount of logging and were surprised to discover the impact of removing relatively few trees.

[...] Lead author Clare Wilkinson, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "That such a small change can impact fish biodiversity is shocking and worrying. We expected to see a gradient from least affected in the selectively logged areas, to heavily impacted for the streams in oil palm plantations. Instead, we saw almost the same level of fish biodiversity loss in all altered environments."

[...] Researchers believe the reasons for these dramatic changes are likely to be down to a range of factors that affect stream habitats when trees are lost. Trees provide shade, creating cooler patches of stream that many fish need to spawn. Older, taller trees provide more of this shade, but they are the ones usually removed in selective logging. Leaf litter from these trees also helps to keep the streams cool and to concentrate food sources.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Major mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, severe depression and bipolar disorder share a common genetic link. Studies of specific families with a history of these types of illnesses have revealed that affected family members share a mutation in the gene DISC1. While researchers have been able to study how DISC1 mutations alter the brain during development in animal models, it has been difficult to find the right tools to study changes in humans. However, advancements in engineering human stem cells are now allowing researchers to grow mini-organs in labs, and gene-editing tools can be used to insert specific mutations into these cells.

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital are leveraging these new technologies to study the effects of DISC1 mutations in cerebral organoids -- "mini brains" -- cultured from human stem cells. Their results are published in Translational Psychiatry.

"Mini-brains can help us model brain development," said senior author Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD, head of the Young-Pearse Lab in the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at BWH. "Compared to traditional methods that have allowed us to investigate human cells in culture in two-dimensions, these cultures let us investigate the three-dimensional structure and function of the cells as they are developing, giving us more information than we would get with a traditional cell culture."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Americans die of heart or cardiovascular disease at an alarming rate. In fact, heart attacks, strokes and related diseases will kill an estimated 610,000 Americans this year alone. Some medications help, but to better tackle this problem, researchers need to know exactly how the heart and blood vessels stay healthy in the first place.

Now, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have identified a protein, called GPR68, that senses blood flow and tells small blood vessels called arterioles when to dilate. The researchers believe medications that activate GPR68 could one day be useful to treat medical conditions, including ischemic stroke.

"It has been known for decades that blood vessels sense changes in blood flow rate, and this information is crucial in regulating blood vessel dilation and controlling vascular tone," says Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, Scripps Research professor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and senior author of the study published today in the journal Cell.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The US government has waded into the omni-shambles that is the internet infrastructure industry's failed effort to comply with European privacy laws.

Having tried to use its behind-the-scenes influence at a recent meeting of DNS overseer ICANN to drive decisions, the Department of Commerce's frustration had led to it going public with a letter to ICANN [PDF] in which it pressures the organization to investigate the world's largest registrar GoDaddy for limiting access to its "Whois" service.

In preparation for the May 25 deadline of Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and in light of the utter failure of ICANN to come up with a way to make the Whois service compliant with that law, GoDaddy has started hiding personal contact details for the 50 million+ domain names it looks after and has begun throttling access to its Whois service.

That would appear to be a commonsense response to a law that can see the company fined millions of dollars for failing to keep personal details private. But it earned the ire of several companies that make a living from accessing such details.

A letter [PDF] from one intellectual property lawyer representing those interests urged ICANN to take action against what he claimed were "clear and direct violations" of GoDaddy's contract with ICANN. ICANN responded [PDF] with no more than an acknowledgement it had received the complaint.

But the US government has unexpectedly came to their defense, noting in its letter that "the actions taken by GoDaddy last month... are of grave concern for NTIA given the US government's interest in maintaining a Whois service that is quickly accessible for legitimate purposes."

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

As part of my ongoing project looking at fusion centers' investigations into Antifa and various white supremacist groups, I filed a request with the WSFC. I got back many standard documents in response, including emails, intelligence briefings and bulletins, reposts from other fusion centers - and then there was one file titled "EM effects on human body.zip."

[...] What you are looking at here is "psycho-electronic" weapons that purportedly use electromagnetism to do a wide variety of horrible things to people, such as reading or writing your mind, causing intense pain, "rigor mortis," or most heinous of all, itching.

Now to be clear, the presence of these records (which were not created by the fusion center, and are not government documents) should not be seen as evidence that DHS possesses these devices, or even that such devices actually exist. Which is kind of unfortunate because "microwave hearing" is a pretty cool line of technobabble to say out loud.

[...] It's difficult to source exactly where these images come from, but it's obviously not government material. One seems to come from a person named "Supratik Saha," who is identified as a software engineer, the brain mapping slide has no sourcing, and the image of the body being assaulted by psychotronic weapons is sourced from raven1.net, who apparently didn't renew their domain.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Only 4.9 percent of today's websites utilize Flash code, a number that has plummeted from a 28.5 percent market share recorded at the start of 2011.

The number, courtesy of web technology survey site W3Techs, confirms Flash's decline, and a reason why Adobe has decided to retire the technology at the end of 2020.

[...] On the client side, browser makers are expected to remove Flash support from their products altogether by the end of 2020 —Flash's end-of-life date.

2020 can't come soon enough.

Source: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/software/flash-used-on-5-percent-of-all-websites-down-from-285-percent-seven-years-ago/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8317

Facebook confirms to TechCrunch that it’s investigating a security research report that shows Facebook user data can be grabbed by third-party JavaScript trackers embedded on websites using Login With Facebook. The exploit lets these trackers gather a user’s data including name, email address, age range, gender, locale, and profile photo depending on what users originally provided to the website. It's unclear what these trackers do with the data, but many of their parent companies including Lytics and ProPS sell publisher monetization services based on collected user data.

Meanwhile, concert site BandsInTown was found to be passing Login With Facebook user data to embedded scripts on sites that install its Amplified advertising product. An invisible BandsInTown iframe would load on these sites, pulling in user data that was then accessible to embedded scripts. That let any malicious site using BandsInTown learn the identity of visitors. BandsInTown has now fixed this vulnerability.

TechCrunch is still awaiting a formal statement from Facebook beyond "We will look into this and get back to you."

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/18/login-with-facebook-data-hijacked-by-javascript-trackers/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Past articles: 2015 • 2016 • 2017 👀

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has come out in support of federal cannabis decriminalization, just in time for 4/20:

The Minority Leader of the Senate is making it official the day before 4/20: He's down with legal weed. In an exclusive interview with VICE News, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) confirmed he is putting his name on legislation that he said is aimed at "decriminalizing" marijuana at the federal level. For Schumer, this is a shift. While he has backed medical marijuana and the rights of states to experiment with legal sales of pot, what he is proposing is a seismic shift in federal drug policy.

"Ultimately, it's the right thing to do. Freedom. If smoking marijuana doesn't hurt anybody else, why shouldn't we allow people to do it and not make it criminal?" Schumer said.

The legislation should be available within a week or so, and would remove cannabis (still listed as "Marihuana") from the Drug Enforcement Administration's list of Schedule I substances. States would then be free to regulate or continue to prohibit the plant. Cannabis advertising would be regulated as are alcohol and tobacco advertising. (Also at NPR, CNN, The Washington Post, and CNBC, as well as Reason taking a shot at Schumer for not doing it sooner.)

A majority of Americans support the legalization of cannabis, including, for the first time, a majority (51%) of Republicans, according to Gallup. Nine states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis for recreational use. 29 states, D.C., Guam, and Puerto Rico have legalized medical use of cannabis, and another 17 states have legalized the use of cannabidiol (CBD). Cannabis became available for recreational purposes in California on January 1.

takyon writes:

LG Display reportedly can't meet Apple's demand for OLED screens due to manufacturing issues. This means that Apple will once again be reliant on its primary supplier and smartphone rival, Samsung:

Analysts have been warning for months that Apple is in "urgent" need of finding another iPhone OLED supplier besides Samsung. Apple currently uses Samsung's OLED displays for the company's iPhone X model. The reliance on a single supplier means Samsung controls pricing on the displays that Apple is buying — and there's no other alternative at the moment.

Also at WSJ and MacRumors.

Related: LG's 88-inch 8K OLED TV
Apple, Valve, and LG Invest in OLED Manufacturer eMagin
Google and LG to Show Off World's Highest Resolution OLED-on-Glass Display in May
Apple Building its Own MicroLED Displays for Eventual Use in Apple Watch and Other Products

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

Oklahoma Representative James Bridenstine, a Navy Reserve pilot, was confirmed as NASA's 13th administrator on Thursday.

In a 50-49 vote Thursday, Oklahoma Representative James Bridenstine, a Navy Reserve pilot, was confirmed as NASA's 13th administrator, an agency that usually is kept away from partisanship. His three predecessors — two nominated by Republicans — were all approved unanimously. Before that, one NASA chief served under three presidents, two Republicans and a Democrat.

The two days of voting were as tense as a launch countdown.

A procedural vote Wednesday initially ended in a 49-49 tie — Vice President Mike Pence, who normally breaks a tie, was at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida — before Arizona Republican Jeff Flake switched from opposition to support, using his vote as leverage to address an unrelated issue.

Thursday's vote included the drama of another delayed but approving vote by Flake, a last-minute no vote by Illinois Democrat Tammy Duckworth — who wheeled onto the floor with her 10-day-old baby in tow — and the possibility of a tie-breaker by Pence, who was back in town.

Original Submission