SoylentNews

takyon writes:

Machine learning algorithms are now involved in the bulk of video removal from YouTube. ~80% of videos removed by YouTube in Q4 2017 were initially flagged by a computer, with many receiving less than 10 views before removal:

The vast majority of videos removed from YouTube toward the end of last year for violating the site's content guidelines had first been detected by machines instead of humans, the Google-owned company said on Monday. YouTube said it took down 8.28 million videos during the fourth quarter of 2017, and about 80 percent of those videos had initially been flagged by artificially intelligent computer systems.

The new data highlighted the significant role machines — not just users, government agencies and other organizations — are taking in policing the service as it faces increased scrutiny over the spread of conspiracy videos, fake news and violent content from extremist organizations. Those videos are sometimes promoted by YouTube's recommendation system and unknowingly financed by advertisers, whose ads are placed next to them through an automated system.

[...] Betting on improvements in artificial intelligence is a common Silicon Valley approach to dealing with problematic content; Facebook has also said it is counting on A.I. tools to detect fake accounts and fake news on its platform. But critics have warned against depending too heavily on computers to replace human judgment.

Also at Recode.

Previously:
Google Fails to Stop Major Brands From Pulling Ads From YouTube
AI Beating Mechanical Turks at YouTube Censorship Accuracy

Related:
YouTube Cracks Down on Weird Content Aimed at Kids
A.I. Algorithm Recognizes Terrorist Propaganda With 99% Accuracy

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A newly published "exploit chain" for Nvidia Tegra X1-based systems seems to describe an apparently unpatchable method for running arbitrary code on all currently available Nintendo Switch consoles. Hardware hacker Katherine Temkin and the hacking team at ReSwitched released an extensive outline of what they're calling the Fusée Gelée coldboot vulnerability earlier today, alongside a proof-of-concept payload that can be used on the Switch.

"Fusée Gelée isn't a perfect, 'holy grail' exploit—though in some cases it can be pretty damned close," Temkin writes in an accompanying FAQ.

The exploit, as outlined, makes use of a vulnerability inherent in the Tegra X1's USB recovery mode, circumventing the lock-out operations that would usually protect the chip's crucial bootROM. By sending a bad "length" argument to an improperly coded USB control procedure at the right point, the user can force the system to "request up to 65,535 bytes per control request." That data easily overflows a crucial direct memory access (DMA) buffer in the bootROM, in turn allowing data to be copied into the protected application stack and giving the attacker the ability to run arbitrary code.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

President Rouhani warns that White House failure to uphold Iran nuclear deal would prompt firm reaction from Tehran.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has called on US President Donald Trump to uphold the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, or "face severe consequences". 

In a televised speech, Rouhani said the "Iranian government will react firmly" if the White House fails to "live up to their commitments" under the agreement. 

The warning comes weeks in advance of a May 12 deadline for Trump to renew the deal.

The US president has previously said he would scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which he has called the "worst deal in history", unless "a better option" is presented to him. 

[...] The landmark deal reached in Lausanne, Switzerland in April 2015 with China, Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany and the US offered Iran more than $110bn a year in sanctions relief and a return to the global economy in exchange for halting its drive for a nuclear weapon.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Sip Safe wristband lets you dab on a drop of your drink to test if it's been spiked.

You learn the rules early when you go to gigs, festivals and bars: Always keep an eye on your drink. Watch out for strangers. Be careful who you leave your glass with.

But now an Australian invention could change that (and put less onus on young people -- especially women -- to completely change the way they act when they're out).

The Sip Safe is a wristband designed for concerts and festivals that lets you test for drugs in your drink. Dab a drop of your drink onto the two spots on the band, wait two minutes till the liquid dries, and if the spots turn darker blue, that's a sign that your drink could have been spiked.

It's not the first invention designed to make drink safety easy -- we've seen drug-testing drinkware, sensors that look like swizzle sticks and even nail polish that tests for date-rape drugs. 

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Anyone who’s ever written more than a dozen or so lines of code knows that debugging is a part of life in our world. Anyone who’s written code for microcontrollers knows that physical debugging is a part of our life as well. Atmel processors uses a serial communications protocol called debugWire, which is a simpler version of JTAG and allows full read/write access to all registers and allows one to single step, break, etc. [Nerd Ralph], a prominent fixture here at Hackaday has dug into the AVR debugWire protocol and enlightened us with some valuable information.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Facebook reveals 25 pages of takedown rules for hate speech and more

Facebook has never before made public the guidelines its moderators use to decide whether to remove violence, spam, harassment, self-harm, terrorism, intellectual property theft, and hate speech from social network until now. The company hoped to avoid making it easy to game these rules, but that worry has been overridden by the public's constant calls for clarity and protests about its decisions. Today Facebook published 25 pages of detailed criteria and examples for what is and isn't allowed.

Facebook is effectively shifting where it will be criticized to the underlying policy instead of individual incidents of enforcement mistakes like when it took down posts of the newsworthy "Napalm Girl" historical photo because it contains child nudity before eventually restoring them. Some groups will surely find points to take issue with, but Facebook has made some significant improvements. Most notably, it no longer disqualifies minorities from shielding from hate speech because an unprotected characteristic like "children" is appended to a protected characteristic like "black".

Nothing is technically changing about Facebook's policies. But previously, only leaks like a copy of an internal rulebook attained by the Guardian had given the outside world a look at when Facebook actually enforces those policies. These rules will be translated into over 40 languages for the public. Facebook currently has 7500 content reviewers, up 40% from a year ago.

Also at MarketWatch.

Related:
Facebook Reports BBC for Reporting Child Porn Images Found on Facebook
Facebook Blocks Users from Sharing World Socialist Web Site Promotional Video
Facebook-Owned Instagram Removes Opioid-Related Posts

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A team of academic security researchers from KU Leuwen, Belgium, have discovered that medical implants like electrical brain implants are quite insecure devices because these have defected [sic] wireless interfaces.

Researchers identified that the security factor of these devices is pretty weak; the defects in their wireless interfaces can allow attackers obtain sensitive neurological data, administer shocks and intercept confidential medical data, which gets transmitted between the implant and the connected devices that are responsible for controlling, updating and reading it.

[...] By hacking neurostimulators, an attacker can cause irreversible damage to the patients by preventing them from speaking or moving. The hacking may also prove to be life-threatening, wrote the Belgian researchers in their paper that provide details about the research findings.

Source: Hackread

chromas writes:

From Google's blog, The Keyword:

In December, we took the Street View trekker to Christmas Island, a remote tropical territory of Australia just south of Indonesia. With Parks Australia, we joined the island's red crabs as they marched in the millions from the forest to the sea for their annual migration.

Now it's time to shellebrate. Starting today on Google Maps Street View and Google Earth, you can explore Christmas Island and Cocos (Keeling) Islands' unique wildlife, dazzling ocean vistas and lush rainforests, including the grand finale of the red crab migration—the spawning. The red crabs wait all year for this very moment—and the precise alignment of the rains, moon and tides—to release their eggs at the coastal waters.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Saudi issues drone restrictions following palace incident

Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry on Sunday instructed drone enthusiasts to obtain permission to fly the devices until regulations were finalised, a day after security forces shot down a recreational drone near the king's palace in Riyadh.

Amateur online videos of heavy gunfire in the capital's Khozama district on Saturday sparked fears of possible political unrest in the world's top oil exporter. A senior Saudi official told Reuters there were no casualties when the drone was shot down and that King Salman was not in the palace at the time.

A security screening point had noticed the flying of a small unauthorized recreational drone, leading security forces to deal with it "according to their orders and instructions", state news agency SPA had said.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Swaziland is no more:

A landlocked, rural nation in southern Africa, Swaziland has significant problems. Nearly a third of the country's population lives in extreme poverty, and about as many are infected with H.I.V., one of the world's highest prevalence rates for the virus. Life expectancy is low, around 50. A recent drought and an infestation of armyworms, an invasive species, devastated crops.

So the kingdom's 1.4 million residents might have been surprised on Thursday when King Mswati III, one of the world's few remaining absolute monarchs, announced the news: The country will henceforth be known as eSwatini, the kingdom's name in the local language. (It means "land of the Swazis" in the Swazi — or siSwati — tongue.)

The king, who has reigned since 1986, announced the name change — an adjustment, really — during a ceremony in the city of Manzini on Thursday to mark his 50th birthday.

Many African countries upon independence "reverted to their ancient, native names," The Associated Press quoted the king as saying. "We no longer shall be called Swaziland from today forward."

According to Reuters, Mswati argued that the kingdom's name had long caused confusion. "Whenever we go abroad, people refer to us as Switzerland," the king said, according to Reuters.

Also at BBC: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43821512.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

In a paper published in Profession, the Modern Language Association's journal about modern languages and literatures, a Saint Louis University professor discusses how he uses video games to teach Italian, allowing his students to master two semesters worth of language acquisition through one intensive class for students new to the Italian language.

[...] Though [Simone] Bregni has used Final Fantasy, Trivial Pursuit, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Heavy Rain and Rise of the Tomb Raider in his classrooms, one of the most useful games to teach Italian is Assassin's Creed II.

"In my Italian Renaissance literature course, for example, students explore Florence as it flourished under the Medici by playing Assassin's Creed II," Bregni says in the paper. "My 21st-century American students partake in the life of Ezio Auditore, a 20-something man from an affluent family, by wandering around a cultural and historical re-creation of 1476 Florence."

[...] In a class called Intensive Italian for Gamers, all students made progress equal to two semesters of Italian over the course of a single fall semester. By the final, students were 3 to 5 points ahead of students in a traditional Italian course.

Source: https://www.slu.edu/news/2018/april/learning-italian-through-gaming.php

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

"Super-Earth" planets are giant-size versions of Earth, and some research has suggested that they're more likely to be habitable than Earth-size worlds. But a new study reveals how difficult it would be for any aliens on these exoplanets to explore space.

To launch the equivalent of an Apollo moon mission, a rocket on a super-Earth would need to have a mass of about 440,000 tons (400,000 metric tons), due to fuel requirements, the study said. That's on the order of the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

"On more-massive planets, spaceflight would be exponentially more expensive," said study author Michael Hippke, an independent researcher affiliated with the Sonneberg Observatory in Germany. "Such civilizations would not have satellite TV, a moon mission or a Hubble Space Telescope."

https://www.space.com/40375-super-earth-exoplanets-hard-aliens-launch.html

[Also Covered By]: GIZMODO

[Paper]: Spaceflight from Super-Earths is difficult

[Related]: 10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

After four years of development, the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) will be unveiled today and released to the broader scientific community this month. The E3SM project is supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science in the Biological and Environmental Research Office. The E3SM release will include model code and documentation, as well as output from an initial set of benchmark simulations.

[...] The goal of the project is to develop an earth system model (ESM) that has not been possible because of limitations in current computing technologies. Meeting this goal will require advances on three frontiers: 1) better resolving earth system processes through a strategic combination of developing new processes in the model, increased model resolution and enhanced computational performance; 2) representing more realistically the two-way interactions between human activities and natural processes, especially where these interactions affect U.S. energy needs; and 3) ensemble modeling to quantify uncertainty of model simulations and projections.

E3SM will provide insights on earth system interactions in the Arctic and their influence on mid-latitude weather. In this E3SM model simulation, winter storm clouds, represented here by outgoing longwave radiation, or OLR, affect sea ice coverage as the clouds move across the Arctic.

The full press release can be found online.

Source: https://www.hpcwire.com/2018/04/23/new-exascale-system-for-earth-simulation-introduced/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

The first US penis transplant was successfully performed in 2016. Last year, a uterus transplant recipient gave birth for the first time in the US, too. Now, doctors at Johns Hopkins University have successfully transplanted an entire penis and scrotum to a young serviceman who sustained injuries in Afghanistan resulting in the loss of his genitals.

"We are hopeful that this transplant will help restore near-normal urinary and sexual functions for this young man," said Johns Hopkins' W.P. Andrew Lee, M.D. in a statement. Nine plastic surgeons and two urological specialists took 14 hours to transplant a deceased donor's entire penis and scrotum (minus testicles), along with a partial abdominal wall, to the young man, who wishes to remain anonymous.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/04/23/johns-hopkins-penis-scrotum-transplant/

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

For the past several years, copyright holders in the US and Europe have been trying to reach out to file-sharers in an effort to change their habits.

Whether via high-profile publicity lawsuits or a simple email, it's hoped that by letting people know they aren't anonymous, they'll stop pirating and buy more content instead.

Traditionally, most ISPs haven't been that keen on passing infringement notices on. However, the BMG v Cox lawsuit seems to have made a big difference, with a growing number of ISPs now visibly warning their users that they operate a repeat infringer policy.

But perhaps the big question is how seriously users take these warnings because – let's face it – that's the entire point of their existence.

Sixty-five thousand five hundred thirty-five but if they sent one more I'd start again.

Source: https://torrentfreak.com/how-many-piracy-warnings-would-get-you-to-stop-180422/

Original Submission