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An Anonymous Coward writes:

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning that a new malware threat has rapidly infected more than a half-million consumer devices. To help arrest the spread of the malware, the FBI and security firms are urging home Internet users to reboot routers and network-attached storage devices made by a range of technology manufacturers.

"The growing menace — dubbed VPNFilter — targets Linksys, MikroTik, NETGEAR and TP-Link networking equipment in the small and home office space, as well as QNAP network-attached storage (NAS) devices, according to researchers at Cisco."

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/05/fbi-kindly-reboot-your-router-now-please/

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

How-to-Geek has a quick overview of the best places to find free audiobooks legally. Great for commutes, road trips, and other travel, these collections include more than just public domain titles. The quality varies but good ones are out there. The list starts out with the obvious destinations of Project Gutenberg and LibriVox and is topped off with a mention of your local public library, which should not be overlooked.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The government has been told to "up its game" over plans to guarantee a minimum internet speed for all broadband users. Peers said the current Universal Service Obligation (USO), which will entitle consumers to a minimum internet speed of 10Mbps, was "unambitious".

But the government said the USO was a "safety net" and it had "much greater ambitions". "The USO has an important part to play in ensuring that no-one is left behind," it added.

Labour spokesman Lord Stevenson of Balmacara opened the debate by saying the House had previously asked for the USO to specify a download speed of 30Mbps, but the general election halted work on the issue. He said the current USO plans contradict other government initiatives. "Surely the architecture of the USO has to be consistent with the government's productivity plan, the industrial strategy and the national infrastructure plan."

"The argument is that without some ambition the USO itself may become a constraint on all these important challenges," he said.

Original Submission

pvanhoof writes:

Microsoft employee Saeed Noursalehi announced the decision to rename Microsoft's Git Virtual File System (GVFS) due to a conflict with the GNOME Virtual File System (Gvfs) project:

We’ve heard the feedback, so lets use this issue to come up with a new name for this project. As we all know, folks from Microsoft don’t have a rich tradition of picking super awesome names for things. I'm no exception to that pattern, so I was thinking we could all put some sensible suggestions into this issue. I’ll then compile a short list and then we’ll all get to vote on the new name.

Source: https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/72

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Health researchers have published an editorial examining research related to the use of sex robots:

Science fiction aside, advanced sex robots are currently heating up the market, with several companies now offering more and more life-like artificial partners, mostly ones mimicking women. Skeptics fear the desirable droids could escalate misogyny and violence against women, ignite deviant urges in pedophiles, or further isolate the sexually frustrated. Sexbot makers, on the other hand, have been pumping their health claims into advertisements, including that the amorous androids could reduce the spread of sexually transmitted disease, aid in sex therapies, and curb deviant desires in pedophiles and other sex offenders.

So far, those claims are "rather specious," according to health researchers Chantal Cox-George of St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in London and Susan Bewley of King's College London. In an editorial [DOI: 10.11336/bmjsrh-2017-200012] [DX] published Monday in BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health, the pair highlight that there are virtually no studies that help bang out the validity of the many health arguments surging around sexbots—arguments both for and against them.

That data dry-spell doesn't let doctors off the hook, though, Cox-George and Bewley write. They call for researchers to get busy setting up studies that will nail the answers. In the meantime, "an absence of evidence does not excuse the medical profession from discussing and debating the issues, as there will inevitably be consequences for physical, mental and social well-being."

Sex technology is already an estimated $30 billion industry, they note. At least four companies are now making adult female sexbots, costing $5,000 to $50,000, and at least one is making "pedobots." The mannequins come with variable ages, features, and even programmable personalities, along with customizable oral, vaginal, and anal openings. Male sexbots are said to be in the works.

An Australian forensic criminologist goes further, speculating that "pedobots" may be illegal down under (archive):

martyb writes:

[Update #2: Wed 20180606 @ 14:30 UTC: WOW! Since this story first posted, we have received 36 subscriptions totaling approximately $1126.27 which brings us to a total of approximately $2716.36 which works out to just over 90% of our $3000.00 goal!! I am extremely impressed with the showing of support from the community and reminds me why I volunteer so much of my time here. It really is the community! THANK YOU! --martyb]

[Update #1: Mon 20180604 @ 14:14 UTC: So far today we have received 16 subscriptions bringing us to just shy of $2000.00 raised for the period and just over $1000 to go. THANK-YOU! --martyb]

tl;dr: SoylentNews needs your financial support... $1400 by June 30th. Please Subscribe.

We have raised approximately $1590.09 towards our funding goal of $3000.00 which covers the period from 2018-01-01 though 2018-06-30.

We run the site with a team of volunteers — absolutely nobody gets paid for their work on this site... all the funds raised go directly into keeping the site up and running.

From the time we went live on February 17, 2014 through today, we have posted over 22,000 stories and nearly 120 polls. In kind, the community has posted over 3270 journal articles and over 688,000 comments.

We understand that not everyone can afford to support the site financially. Those who make contributions "in kind" through submitting stories or comments, making moderations, and the like... please accept my sincere "Thank-You!" Without your contributions, there would either be no site or no reason to come here.

For those of you who have previously subscribed, thank YOU for "keeping the lights on". Good wishes did not pay for servers, federal and state tax returns, or domain registrations... You did! Thank you!

A complicating factor came from our having a problem with the subscription page about a month ago... but TMB put up a fix and we've seen no regressions, since. Perhaps this bit you and you meant to "try again later"? (As of my writing this, we have 123 users who have accessed the site within the past month, who had previously subscribed, but whose subscription is now lapsed.)

Whether your subscription has lapsed or you never previously subscribed, would you please consider signing up? Go to the subscription page, pick a duration, and type in an amount that is at least the amount suggested for that duration (excess amounts are, of course, most welcome!). If you would like to help the site without getting a subscription for yourself, you can make a gift subscription by specifying a UID and an amount, instead. (If you have nobody in particular in mind, please feel free to use UID 6 — "mcasadevall")

Original Submission

takyon writes:

The Higgs boson reveals its affinity for the top quark

New results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC reveal how strongly the Higgs boson interacts with the heaviest known elementary particle, the top quark, corroborating our understanding of the Higgs and setting constraints on new physics.

The Higgs boson interacts only with massive particles, yet it was discovered in its decay to two massless photons. Quantum mechanics allows the Higgs to fluctuate for a very short time into a top quark and a top anti-quark, which promptly annihilate each other into a photon pair. The probability of this process occurring varies with the strength of the interaction (known as coupling) between the Higgs boson and top quarks. Its measurement allows us to indirectly infer the value of the Higgs-top coupling. However, undiscovered heavy new-physics particles could likewise participate in this type of decay and alter the result. This is why the Higgs boson is seen as a portal to new physics.

A more direct manifestation of the Higgs-top coupling is the emission of a Higgs boson by a top-antitop quark pair. Results presented today, at the LHCP conference in Bologna, describe the observation of this so-called "ttH production" process. Results from the CMS collaboration, with a significance exceeding five standard deviations (considered the gold standard) for the first time, have just been published in the journal Physical Review Letters [open, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.231801]; including more data from the ongoing LHC-run, the ATLAS collaboration just submitted new results for publication, with a larger significance.

Also at ZME Science.

Related: Confirmed: Yes, it is the Higgs
Successor to the LHC Could be a "Higgs Boson Factory"

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

"The Pentagon has completed initial draft plans for several emerging low-yield sea-launched nuclear weapons intended to deter potential attackers and add new precision strike options to those currently possible with the existing arsenal.

While final requirements for both a low-yield sea-launched nuclear cruise missile and long-range sub-launched low-yield warhead are still in development, Pentagon officials tell Warrior Maven the process has taken several substantial new steps forward."

A Trident missile with a low-yield warhead "would offer a yet-to-exist long-range low-yield sea launched weapon. The existing Trident II D5 has a massive 100-kiloton yield, bringing massive destructive power to large swaths of territories – entire cities and well beyond."

foxnews.com/tech/2018/06/05/pentagon-completes-draft-plans-for-new-low-yield-sea-launched-nuclear-weapon.html

Also covered by:

• National Interest
• NPR
• Washington Post

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

"Alexander Berezin, a theoretical physicist at the National Research University of Electronic Technology in Russia, has proposed a new answer to Fermi's paradox — but he doesn't think you're going to like it. Because, if Berezin's hypothesis is correct, it could mean a future for humanity that's 'even worse than extinction.'

'What if,' Berezin wrote in a new paper posted March 27 to the preprint journal arxiv.org, 'the first life that reaches interstellar travel capability necessarily eradicates all competition to fuel its own expansion?'" foxnews.com/science/2018/06/04/aliens-are-real-but-humans-will-probably-kill-them-all-new-paper-says.html

In other words, could humanity's quest to discover intelligent life be directly responsible for obliterating that life outright? What if we are, unwittingly, the universe's bad guys?

And if you are not sure what the Fermi paradox is then the link should help, and there is a long explanation of that one in the article.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Asteroid on Course to Earth Was Spotted Just Hours Before It Hit The Atmosphere

Witnesses reported a fireball streaking across the sky above Botswana on Saturday night. The asteroid hurtling toward Earth at 10 miles (16 km) a second looked like it could be the harbinger of catastrophe. A webcam in a rural area west of Johannesburg captured it, showing a luminous orb igniting the sky in a bright flash.

NASA had only discovered the asteroid on Saturday and determined it was on a collision course for the planet, charted for entry in a vast expanse from Southern Africa and across the Indian Ocean to New Guinea and given the name 2018 LA.

The reality of the asteroid's fiery end was less dramatic than the video shows. The asteroid was estimated at just six feet (1.8 metres) across, otherwise known as boulder-sized, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement. It burned up "several miles" above the Earth's surface.

2018 LA aka ZLAF9B2 (25-35 tons).
2014 AA (40 tons).
2008 TC₃ (80 tons).

Original Submission

frojack writes:

ArsTechnica has a story that suggests that Easter Island is not an allegory for a failed lifeboat-earth scenario that so many claim.

While trying to explain the "Hats" on some Easter Island statues, the article reveals that the scientific thinking has been slowly changing over the years, and the Islanders are probably not guilty of all the tragically foolish things we assumed, and the ssland was never as populated as some had surmised.

Along the way several key theories have changed:

• Rats and wildfires, not human clearing, doomed the island's palm forests, while European diseases and slavery doomed its people.
• Significant variation in Statutes and Hats suggests they were village size projects, rather than kingdom sized. Work crews were much smaller than imagined.
• Stone hats were simply rolled on the ground from quarry to pedestal, and not with gangs of slave labor, and tree trunk rollers.
• The statues themselves may have been rolled as well.
• Statues were corner "walked" like a refrigerator by a few people with levers and stones.
• Hats were rolled up and incline plane of rocks with ropes, (parbuckeling) by as few as just 15 people.

And if that's the case, then the Rapanui wouldn't actually have needed a workforce of thousands, under the direction of a powerful central ruling class, to install the hats. A few smaller communities could have done the job, which supports the argument that Easter Island's population was always small and didn't drive itself to collapse by building giant statues. Lipo and Hunt had previously come to the same conclusion about moving the actual statues.

That finding goes a long way to exonerate the ancient Rapanui in the case of their own population crash. The statues would have been a big project, but they clearly weren't ecocidally resource-intensive monuments to irrational cultural hubris, either.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Space Invaders at 40: 'I tried soldiers, but shooting people was frowned upon'

In the 1970s, as Tomohiro Nishikado began to consider designing his next arcade game, the video game medium was in a fledgling state. With few rules to follow or break, the pioneering game developer had the creative freedom he needed to build a true cultural phenomenon. The game Nishikado was starting to plot out in his mind was Space Invaders, the iconic shoot 'em up that is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

"I had no idea the game would become so popular it would become a social phenomenon," Nishikado remembers. "I was totally taken aback." Despite his surprise, the game designer had certainly crafted something of great cultural significance.

[...] Nishikado linked points to in-game progression and introduced the concept of saving scores to the arcade cabinet. That framed score as a signifier of skill and survival, and lured players back to a given arcade cabinet to beat the tallies of others who had played before them; a convention that established competitive gaming. "My initial intention was not to create a game that centred on scoring mechanics, but rather one where players would compete to see who could clear the most waves," he explains. "However, making the UFO's score a mystery led to players becoming very conscious of their score and eventually they started competing on that basis.

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

The Moons of Some Giant Alien Planets Could Host Life

Researchers have identified more than 100 giant exoplanets that may have potentially life-hosting moons. The new analysis could change the way scientists search for life in the cosmos, study team members said. That search has generally focused on places more or less like Earth — rocky planets in the "habitable zone" of their host star, that just-right range of distances where liquid water could exist on a world's surface. Jupiter-like planets don't seem like good candidates in this regard, because they have no discernible surface. But the rocky moons of such gas giants may be a different story, study team members said.

Also at University of California, Riverside.

Exploring Kepler Giant Planets in the Habitable Zone (arXiv:1805.03370)

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8093

State laws that require gun purchasers to obtain a license contingent on passing a background check performed by state or local law enforcement are associated with a 14 percent reduction in firearm homicides in large, urban counties.

Studies have shown that these laws, which are sometimes called permit-to-purchase licensing laws, are associated with fewer firearm homicides at the state level. This is the first study to measure the impact of licensing laws on firearm homicides in large, urban counties, where close to two-thirds of all gun deaths in the U.S. occur.

The study was published online May 22 in the Journal of Urban Health and was written by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis.

Handgun licensing laws typically require prospective gun purchasers to apply directly to a state or local law enforcement agency to obtain a purchase permit, which is dependent on passing a background check, prior to approaching a seller. Many state licensing laws also require applicants to submit fingerprints.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8093

For the first time, researchers are pointing out the influence of the internal clock on atherosclerosis. Their study gives an important indication on how the therapeutic approach can be improved.

Oliver Söhnlein researches molecular mechanisms underlying atherosclerosis at the Institute for Cardiovascular Prevention. During this disease, lipid deposits can form on the inner vascular wall of large arteries. Cells of the immune system travel from the blood to the damaged location and attract more and more cells via signaling substances until the immune reaction finally derails. Atherosclerotic inflammation develops over years; however, the recruitment of cells is subject to circadian rhythms as Söhnlein has proven in mouse models of atherosclerosis. "At certain times of the day, three times as many leukocytes travel to the center of arterial inflammation as it is the case for other times," says Söhnlein. This rhythmic migration pattern is about 12 hours phase shifted with the recruitment pattern observed in the microcirculation in small veins.