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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/05/31/lawsuit-against-greenpeace-raises-freedom-speech-concerns

In a 2017 report on SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), the former United Nations expert on freedom of assembly wrote that SLAPPs pose significant threats to the rights of activists to freedom of expression, of assembly, and of association. The UN expert raised particular concerns about the potential use of the US racketeering law at issue in the Resolute case, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), as a vehicle for abusive SLAPP suits. This is because RICO allows corporations to label advocacy groups as "criminal enterprises" and claim enormous amounts in damages.

Freedom of expression is a pillar of democracy. Countries should examine their laws and ensure that they do not facilitate the abuse and proliferation of SLAPP lawsuits. In the face of serious threats to our environment, such as biodiversity loss, climate change, and chemical pollution, it is critical for environmental activists and groups to be able to organize and freely express themselves without the threat of baseless lawsuits.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180531/06500839947/icanns-pre-emptive-attack-gdpr-thrown-out-court-germany.shtml

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has only just started to be enforced, but it is already creating some seriously big waves in the online world, as Techdirt has reported. Most of those are playing out in obvious ways, such as Max Schrems's formal GDPR complaints against Google and Facebook over "forced consent" (pdf). That hardly came as a shock -- he's been flagging up the move on Twitter for some time. But there's another saga underway that may have escaped people's notice. It involves ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which runs the Internet's namespace. Back in 2015, Mike memorably described the organization as "a total freaking mess", in an article about ICANN's "war against basic privacy". Given that history, it's perhaps no surprise that ICANN is having trouble coming to terms with the GDPR. The bone of contention is the information that is collected by the world's registrars for the Whois system, run by ICANN. EPAG, a Tucows-owned registrar based in Bonn, Germany, is concerned that this personal data might fall foul of the GDPR, and thus expose it to massive fines. As it wrote in a recent blog post:

We realized that the domain name registration process, as outlined in ICANN's 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement, not only required us to collect and share information we didn't need, it also required us to collect and share people's information where we may not have a legal basis to do so. What's more, it required us to process personal information belonging to people with whom we may not even have a direct relationship, namely the Admin and Tech contacts [for each domain name].

All of those activities are potentially illegal under the GDPR. EPAG therefore built a new domain registration system with "consent management processes", and a data flow "aligned with the GDPR's principles". ICANN was not happy with this minimalist approach, and sought an injunction in Germany in order to "preserve Whois data" -- that is, to force EPAG to collect those administrative and technical contacts.

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takyon writes:

They Let Their 15-Year-Old Son Smoke Pot to Stop His Seizures. Georgia Took Him Away. (archive)

The pharmaceuticals weren't working. The 15-year-old boy was having several seizures per day, and his parents were concerned his life was in danger. So Suzeanna and Matthew Brill, of Macon, Ga., decided in February to let their son try smoking marijuana — and his seizures stopped for 71 days, they say.

The Brills' decision led to the boy, David, being taken away from his parents, who face possible fines and jail time after being charged with reckless conduct for giving him the drug. David has now been in a group home for 30 days, and his seizures have returned. He is separated from the service dog that sniffed out his seizures, and he is able to communicate with his parents only during short visitations and phone calls.

They maintain they made the right decision for their son's health, despite their current predicament. "Even with the ramifications with the law, I don't care," said Mr. Brill, his stepfather. "For 71 days he was able to ride a bike, go play, lift weights. We were able to achieve that with David medicated not from Big Pharma, but David medicated with marijuana."

The Brill parents were jailed on April 20, and posted bond on April 25.

Since The New York Times published the article, Twiggs County Sheriff Darren Mitchum has received media attention and threatening phone calls, one of which he played back for reporters at a press conference.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed tiny ultrasound-powered robots that can swim through blood, removing harmful bacteria along with the toxins they produce. These proof-of-concept nanorobots could one day offer a safe and efficient way to detoxify and decontaminate biological fluids.

Researchers built the nanorobots by coating gold nanowires with a hybrid of platelet and red blood cell membranes. This hybrid cell membrane coating allows the nanorobots to perform the tasks of two different cells at once—platelets, which bind pathogens like MRSA bacteria (an antibiotic-resistant strain of Staphylococcus aureus), and red blood cells, which absorb and neutralize the toxins produced by these bacteria. The gold body of the nanorobots responds to ultrasound, which gives them the ability to swim around rapidly without chemical fuel. This mobility helps the nanorobots efficiently mix with their targets (bacteria and toxins) in blood and speed up detoxification.

The work, published May 30 in Science Robotics, combines technologies pioneered by Joseph Wang and Liangfang Zhang, professors in the Department of NanoEngineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Wang's team developed the ultrasound-powered nanorobots, and Zhang's team invented the technology to coat nanoparticles in natural cell membranes.

[...]The nanorobots are about 25 times smaller than the width of a human hair. They can travel up to 35 micrometers per second in blood when powered by ultrasound. In tests, researchers used the nanorobots to treat blood samples contaminated with MRSA and their toxins. After five minutes, these blood samples had three times less bacteria and toxins than untreated samples.

The work is still at an early stage. Researchers note that the ultimate goal is not to use the nanorobots specifically for treating MRSA infections, but more generally for detoxifying biological fluids. Future work includes tests in live animals. The team is also working on making nanorobots out of biodegradable materials instead of gold.

Paper title: "Hybrid biomembrane-functionalized nanorobots for concurrent removal of pathogenic bacteria and toxins." Co-authors include joint co-first authors Pavimol Angsantikul and Doris. E Ramirez-Herrera, Fernando Soto, Hazhir Teymourian and Diana Dehaini, Yijie Chen, all at UC San Diego.

Explore further: Toward nanorobots that swim through blood to deliver drugs

More information: Berta Esteban-Fernández de Ávila et al. Hybrid biomembrane–functionalized nanorobots for concurrent removal of pathogenic bacteria and toxins, Science Robotics (2018). DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aat0485

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8317

The US Department of Homeland Security recently warned that malicious hackers may have targeted US phone users by exploiting a four-decades-old networking protocol used by cell phone providers around the world, according to a spokesman for US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). Meanwhile, the spokesman said, one of the nation's major cellular carriers recently experienced a breach of that same protocol that exposed customer data.

[...] In a letter Sen. Wyden received last week, DHS officials warned that "nefarious actors may have exploited" SS7 to "target the communications of American citizens," Wyden spokesman Keith Chu told Ars, confirming an article published Wednesday by The Washington Post. On Tuesday, Wyden sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai that heightened concerns of SS7 hacks on US infrastructure.

"This threat is not merely hypothetical—malicious attackers are already exploiting SS7 vulnerabilities," Wyden wrote. "One of the major wireless carriers informed my office that it reported an SS7 breach, in which customer data was accessed, to law enforcement through the government's Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) Reporting Portal."

[...] Sen. Wyden's letter this week to the FCC chairman is a reminder that loopholes that allow all the carriers to share customer location data aren't the only threat facing cellphone users. In responses sent late last year to Wyden's questions about SS7 security, both Verizon and T-Mobile confirmed that they were still in the process of implementing firewalls that would filter malicious requests. AT&T, meanwhile, said it implemented such firewalls but didn't say when.

The senator accused the FCC of failing to adequately answer the threat posed by SS7, noting among other things that a working group the FCC convened in 2016 to address SS7 vulnerabilities was dominated by carrier insiders and comprised no academic experts.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/05/nefarious-actors-may-have-abused-routing-protocol-to-spy-on-us-phone-users/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Even if keeping bees sounds about as wise to you as keeping velociraptors (we all know how that movie went), we have to acknowledge that they are a worthwhile thing to have around. We don’t personally want them around us of course, but we respect those who are willing to keep a hive on their property for the good of the environment. But as it turns out, there are more challenges to keeping bees than not getting stung: you’ve got to keep track of the things too.

After some training, a Raspberry Pi with a camera can count how many bees are in a given image to within a few percent of the actual number. Getting an accurate count of his bees allows [Mat] to generate fascinating visualizations about his hive’s activity and health. With real-world threats such as colony collapse disorder, this type of hard data can be crucial.

This is a perfect example of a hack which might not pertain to many of us as-is, but still contains a wealth of information which could be applicable to other projects. [Mat] goes into a fantastic amount of detail about the different approaches he tried, what worked, what didn’t, and where he goes from here. So far the only problem he’s having is with the Raspberry Pi: it’s only able to run at one frame per second due to the computational requirements of identifying the bees. But he’s got some ideas to improve the situation.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8317

Russia ordered a ban of the Telegram secure messaging app back in April, and the knock-on effects continue to cause issues for users outside of Russia. Following the messy block of 15.8 million IPs on Amazon and Google's cloud platforms, Telegram CEO Pavel Durov says Apple has been blocking updates for the app globally. The lack of Telegram app updates mean some features, like stickers, aren't working correctly in the recently released iOS 11.4 update.

"Apple has been preventing Telegram from updating its iOS apps globally ever since the Russian authorities ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store," explains Durov in a Telegram message. "While Russia makes up only 7 percent of Telegram's userbase, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April."

Durov also claims the lack of app updates mean Telegram has also "been unable to fully comply with GDPR" before the May 25th deadline. While a lack of GDPR compliance is a concern for both end users and Telegram itself, app updates usually also include important security patches and bug fixes so if the block continues then iPhone users of the service could be left at risk.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/31/17412396/telegram-apple-app-store-app-updates-russia

See also:
Reuters
The New York Times
Phys.org
The Register

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Is Uber looking to Waymo to get it back on the road to self-driving cars?

After one of Uber's self-driving cars was involved in a fatal crash with a pedestrian in Arizona in April, the ride-hailing service temporarily halted its self-driving operations in all cities where it's been testing its vehicles.  

Now Khosrowshahi says he's looking to an industry rival to get Uber's program back on the road by this summer.

"When we get back on the road, we have to be absolutely satisfied we're getting back on the road it in the safest manner possible," Khosrowshahi said Wednesday during an on-stage interview at Recode's Code Conference, which is being held this week in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. 'We're having conversations with Waymo about putting their cars on our network. If something happens, great. If not, we can live with that, too."

"I'd welcome Waymo to put cars in our network," he said, calling the company an "incredible technology provider."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Git repository hosting services GitHub, GitLab and Microsoft VSTS each patched a serious vulnerability on Tuesday that could lead to arbitrary code execution when a developer uses a malicious repository.

Developers behind the open-source development Git tool pushed out Git 2.17.1, addressing two bugs (CVE-2018-11233 and CVE-2018-11235).

“These are tricky vulnerabilities that will require the Git hosting services to patch, but also individual developers who are using the tool,” said Tim Jarrett, senior director of security, Veracode.

Of the two vulnerabilities, CVE-2018-11235 is the most worrisome, researchers said.

The vulnerability is described as a submodule configuration flaw that surfaces when the Git submodule configuration is cloned. Git provides developers with post-checkout hooks, which are executed within the context of the project. Those hooks can be defined within the submodules, and submodules can be malicious and directed to execute code.

“The software does not properly validate submodule ‘names’ supplied via the untrusted .gitmodules file when appending them to the ‘$GIT_DIR/modules’ directory. A remote repository can return specially crafted data to create or overwrite files on the target user’s system when the repository is cloned, causing arbitrary code to be executed on the target user’s system,” according to a SecurityTracker description of the flaw.

[...] “Git will now refuse to work with repositories that contain a submodule configuration like this. And Visual Studio Team Services — along with most other hosting providers — will actively reject you from pushing repositories that contain such a submodule configuration, to help protect clients that haven’t yet upgraded,” Thomson continued.

Researcher Etienne Stalmans is credited for discovering the vulnerability via GitHub’s bug bounty program. Credit for fixing the bugs goes to Jeff King and Johannes, Schindelin and others. The patches made available Tuesday cover both CVEs.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Scientists Built the World's Smallest House

Tiny houses are all the rage these days, but scientists have shrunk the trend to proportions far too small for humans—or mites, for that matter.

As Becky Ferreira reports for Motherboard, nanorobotics researchers at the Femto-ST Institute in Besançon, France have built a house that measures just 20 micrometers long, making it the smallest house in the world. The itsy-bitsy dwelling would "not even able to accommodate a mite," the team writes in a paper published in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A.

The house was made from a layer of silica set on the tip of an optical fiber that measures less than the width of a human hair, according to Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch. Researchers used a device called the μRobotex platform, which combines three existing technologies: a dual scanning electron microscope/focused ion beam, a gas injection system and a tiny maneuverable robot.

Smallest microhouse in the world, assembled on the facet of an optical fiber by origami and welded in the μRobotex nanofactory (DOI: 10.1116/1.5020128) (DX)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Previously, NASA planned to lower the closest approach to Ceres of the Dawn spacecraft to around 120 miles (200 km) from 239 miles (385 km). Now, the XMO7 orbit will reach an altitude of just 22 miles (35 km) above Ceres. The images returned should be over 9000 times better than what Hubble can capture. This is the final orbit planned:

NASA's Dawn spacecraft is maneuvering to its lowest-ever orbit for a close-up examination of the inner solar system's only dwarf planet.

In early June, Dawn will reach its new, final orbit above Ceres. Soon after, it will begin collecting images and other science data from an unprecedented vantage point. This orbit will be less than 30 miles (50 kilometers) above the surface of Ceres -- 10 times closer than the spacecraft has ever been.

Dawn will collect gamma ray and neutron spectra, which help scientists understand variations in the chemical makeup of Ceres' uppermost layer. That very low orbit also will garner some of Dawn's closest images yet.

The transfer from Dawn's previous orbit to its final one is not as simple as making a lane change. Dawn's operations team worked for months to plot the course for this second extended mission of the veteran spacecraft, which is propelled by an ion engine. Engineers mapped out more than 45,000 possible trajectories before devising a plan that will allow the best science observations.

Previously: Dawn Mission Extended at Ceres

Related: Ceres May Have Had a Global Surface Ocean in the Past
Evidence of a Seasonal Water Cycle and Surface Changes Found on Ceres

Original Submission

takyon writes:

ARM has announced its latest CPU, promising "laptop-class" performance:

So what is the Cortex A76? In Arm's words, it's a "laptop-class" performance processor with mobile efficiency. The vision of the A76 as a laptop-class processor had been emphasised throughout the TechDay presentation so it seems Arm is really taking advantage of the large performance boost of the IP to cater to new market segments such as the emerging "Always connected PCs" which Qualcomm is spearheading with their SoC platforms.

[...] In broad metrics, what we're promised in actual products using the A76 is the follows: a 35% performance increase alongside 40% improved power efficiency. We'll also see a 4x improvements in machine learning workloads thanks to new optimisations in the ASIMD pipelines and how dot products are handled. These figures are baselined on A75 configurations running at 2.8GHz on 10nm processes while the A76 is projected by Arm to come in at 3GHz on 7nm TSMC based products.

The new CPU is naturally still compatible with DynamIQ's common cluster topology and Arm envisions designs to be paired with Cortex A55s as the little more power efficient CPUs. The configuration scalability of the DynamIQ IP again was reiterated and we were presented with example configurations such as 1+7 or 2+6 with either Cortex A75 or A76 CPU IP. This presentation slide was one of the rare ones where Arm referred to the area size of the A76, pointing out that the A75 still had better PPA and thus might still be a valid design choice for companies, depending on their needs. One comparison that was made during the event is that in terms of area, three A76's with larger caches would fit inside the size of a Skylake core – all while within 10% of the IPC of the Intel CPU, but obviously there's also process node scaling considerations to take into account.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A judge has proposed a nationwide programme to file down the points of kitchen knives as a solution to the country’s soaring knife crime epidemic.

Last week in his valedictory address, retiring Luton Crown Court Judge Nic Madge spoke of his concern that carrying a knife had become routine in some circles and called on the Government to ban the sale of large pointed kitchen knives.

[...] He said laws designed to reduce the availability of weapons to young would-be offenders had had “almost no effect”, since the vast majority had merely taken knives from a cutlery drawer.

[...] He asked: “But why we do need eight-inch or ten-inch kitchen knives with points?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/27/knives-sharp-filing-solution-soaring-violent-crime-judge-says/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Trump signs 'right to try' drug bill

President Trump signed a bill Wednesday allowing terminally ill patients access to experimental medical treatments not yet approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Dubbed "right to try," the law's passage was a major priority of Trump and Vice President Pence, as well as congressional Republicans.

"Thousands of terminally ill Americans will finally have hope, and the fighting chance, and I think it's going to better than a chance, that they will be cured, they will be helped, and be able to be with their families for a long time, or maybe just for a longer time," Trump said at a bill signing ceremony at the White House, surrounded by terminally ill patients and their families.

Trump thanked lawmakers sitting in the audience who sponsored the bill, including Sen. Joe Donnelly, a vulnerable Democrat up for reelection in Indiana.

Also at CNN.

Related: What a Gottlieb-Led FDA Might Mean for the Pharmaceutical Industry
Texas Sanctions FDA-Unapproved Stem Cell Therapies
Drug Approvals Sped Up in 2017

Also submitted by mrpg

Original Submission

quietus writes:

Wilbur Ross, the US commerce secretary has penned an opinion piece about GDPR in the Financial Times[Paywalled, but a search on quoted text is fruitful. -Ed.]

In short, GDPR is unclear -- "guidance on GDPR implementation is too vague" -- will create barriers to trade -- "serious, unclear legal obligations for both private and public sector entities, including the US government", could threaten public welfare on both sides of the Atlantic, delay the approval of new life-saving drugs and prevent the effective treatment of epidemics like Ebola.

[...] We do not have a clear understanding of what is required to comply, the commerce secretary sighs.

And then Whois.

GDPR also raises concern for law enforcement and intellectual property rights by restricting access to publicly available internet domain-name registration data. We anticipate companies will either stop providing "Whois" lookup services outright, or make it hard to access information. That could stop law enforcement from ascertaining who is behind websites that propagate terrorist information, sponsor malicious botnets or steal IP addresses.

Finally, secretary Ross dropped an interesting note, about the US Postal Service no less. Tantamount is that "the new rules will prevent EU postal operators from providing the personal data on individuals it needs to process inbound mail."

Assuming the commerce secretary isn't talking about name and address: what other personal information is required?

Original Submission