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canopic jug writes:

Derek Zimmer has a blog post over at Private Internet Access about the Firefox extension Lightbeam and how it shows graphically in realtime the benefits of privacy. Lightbeam is a continuation of the visualization project, Collusion, which was introduced in 2012. The extension shows which sites your browser is interacting with including third party connections and shows the relation between them. It has several visualization modes and the ability to save the connection history to a file. He notes that it is very useful in seeing the relation of a page to the plethora of trackers, web libraries, cookies, and all kinds of outside parties trying to gather and sell your data which it pulls in.

Original Submission

"upstart" writes:

HBO, CNN, DC Comics, and more could join a streaming video service under AT&T

According to a report from CNN, WarnerMedia plans to launch its own streaming service in the fourth quarter of 2019, adding to growing list of OTT (over-the-top) services that bypass cable providers and bring television series and movies directly to viewers—most of them for a monthly fee.

The organization (formerly Time Warner) has several TV-content networks under its umbrella, including HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros. Turner's assets include CNN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies, and others. Warner Bros. produces series such as The Big Bang Theory, The Voice, and The Bachelor for distribution on other networks, as well as feature films like Crazy Rich Asians, Wonder Woman, Blade Runner 2049, Ready Player One, and Dunkirk. Warner Bros. also owns DC Comics.

And of course HBO produces original series like Game of Thrones, Sex and the City, Westworld, and Silicon Valley, and others, plus documentaries and other films and specials.

WarnerMedia was acquired by communications and media behemoth AT&T in June. As viewers change habits and shift to skipping cable providers, networks like HBO and Turner that have traditionally depended on fees cable television providers pay for their content have begun shifting their focus to "direct-to-consumer" distribution via streaming video in an effort to survive the transition.

And if you're thinking, "Wait, HBO already has a streaming service—actually, two," you're right. HBO Now serves viewers who don't want to get the channel through a traditional cable TV package, and HBO Go streams episodes and films to viewers who subscribe to the cable channel.

According to a report in July shortly after the AT&T acquisition, it didn't take long for the company to start talking about plans to shake things up at the boutique channel. AT&T executives said then that they want to move HBO towards creating more content with distribution to mobile devices in mind, even if that means shaking up the formula (for example, producing 20 minute episodes instead of 60 minutes) or a drop in quality.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Soyuz FG fails during ascent – Soyuz MS-10 crew safe after ballistic entry abort

The Russian federal space agency, Roscosmos, launched their Soyuz MS-10 crew vehicle with two new crewmembers that were set for the International Space Station. However, the launch – which took place on Thursday at 0840 UTC from Baikonur – failed a few minutes into flight. Soyuz MS-10 was then aborted on a ballistic entry, before safely landing downrange of the launch site.

The crewed Soyuz, which would normally ferry three people to the Station, was carrying a reduced crew complement as part of Russia's initiative to keep their total crew presence on Station to just two until the launch, late next year, of their primary science lab, Nauka.

However, those plans are unlikely to apply now Soyuz MS-10 has failed to arrive at the ISS, with the Soyuz FG likely to be grounded for some time as a State Commision invesigation[sic] takes place.

Also at The Verge, Reuters, and CNN, and CBS.

Hat tip to iWantToKeepAnon who also made a submission on this story.

Original Submission

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Never forget a face? Research suggests people know an average of 5,000 faces

For the first time scientists have been able to put a figure on how many faces people actually know- a staggering 5,000 on average.

The research team, from the University of York, tested study participants on how many faces they could recall from their personal lives and the media, as well as the number of famous faces they recognised.

[...] Dr Rob Jenkins, from the Department of Psychology at the University of York, said: "Our study focused on the number of faces people actually know- we haven't yet found a limit on how many faces the brain can handle.

[...] For the study, participants spent an hour writing down as many faces from their personal lives as possible -- including people they went to school with, colleagues and family. They then did the same for famous faces, such as actors, politicians, and other public figures.

The participants found it easy to come up with lots of faces at first, but harder to think of new ones by the end of the hour. That change of pace allowed the researchers to estimate when they would run out of faces completely.

The participants were also shown thousands of photographs of famous people and asked which ones they recognised. The researchers required participants to recognise two different photos of each person to ensure consistency.

The results showed that the participants knew between 1,000 and 10,000 faces.

R. Jenkins, A. J. Dowsett, A. M. Burton. How many faces do people know? Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2018; 285 (1888): 20181319 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2018.1319

Original Submission

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

PINs and needled: Experian site blabbed codes to unlock credit accounts for fraudsters

Experian's website exposed to world-plus-dog the PINs needed to unlock frozen accounts, allowing crooks to potentially apply for loans and credit cards as their victims.

The credit-monitor agency lets people freeze their account using a PIN that has to be submitted in when applying for stuff like loans: it's a mechanism that's supposed to stop fraudsters from exploiting stolen personal information, such as names and social security numbers, to obtain credit using someone else's identity.

However, according to financial advice site Nerdwallet this month, the credit monitoring agency had a glitch in its online account recovery process that, when exploited, could leak a stranger's recovery PIN. A miscreant could then use that number to reverse an account freeze and free up funds for plundering.

martyb writes:

Australia Doesn't Care to Break its Coal Habit in the Face of Climate Change:

Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a dire warning about climate change: unless governments of the world coordinate to implement multiple long-term changes, we risk overshooting the 2°C warming scenario that countries strived to target in the Paris Agreement. This would lead to ecosystem damage, increasingly dramatic heat waves and previously-irregular weather patterns in different regions, and subsequent health impacts for humans.

Retiring coal-fired power plants is a significant action that could limit our race toward an unstable future. But Australia's officials don't quite care. According to The Guardian, the country's deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said that Australia would "'absolutely' continue to use and exploit its coal reserves, despite the IPCC's dire warnings the world has just 12 years to avoid climate-change catastrophe."

McCormack also reportedly said that Australia would not change its coal policies "just because somebody might suggest that some sort of report is the way we need to follow and everything that we should do."

martyb writes:

There's a New Report on Space Launch System (SLS) Rocket Management, and It's Pretty Brutal:

Boeing has been building the core stage of NASA's Space Launch System rocket for the better part of this decade, and the process has not always gone smoothly, with significant overruns and multiyear delays. A new report from NASA's inspector general makes clear just how badly the development process has gone, laying the blame mostly at the feet of Boeing.

"We found Boeing's poor performance is the main reason for the significant cost increases and schedule delays to developing the SLS core stage," the report, signed by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin, states. "Specifically, the project's cost and schedule issues stem primarily from management, technical, and infrastructure issues directly related to Boeing's performance."

As of August 2018, the report says, NASA has spent a total of $11.9 billion on the SLS. Even so, the rocket's critical core stage will be delivered more than three years later than initially planned—at double the anticipated cost. Overall, there are a number of top-line findings in this report, which cast a mostly if not completely negative light on Boeing and, to a lesser extent, NASA and its most expensive spaceflight project.

Schedule slips

The report found that NASA will need to spend an additional $1.2 billion, on top of its existing $6.2 billion contract for the core stages of the first two SLS rockets, to reach a maiden launch date of June 2020. NASA originally planned to launch the SLS rocket on its maiden flight in November 2017.

However, given all of the development problems that the SLS rocket has seen, the report does not believe a mid-2020 date is likely either. "In light of the project's development delays, we have concluded NASA will be unable to meet its EM-1 launch window currently scheduled between December 2019 and June 2020," the report states.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

In recent years, massive solar projects proposed for the Middle East have grabbed headlines with extremely low prices. Developers have announced agreements to sell their solar energy for as low as 2.34¢ per kilowatt-hour (kWh)—lower than the US' lowest prices and much lower than the average 6¢ per kilowatt-hour that the US lauded last September.

What they learned was that the numbers posted in four of the most recent Middle East solar projects were likely real, with some reasonable help from favorable government policies. Still, the numbers seem real for the region; not all cost reductions are likely to transfer to other parts of the world.

[...] The researchers primarily looked at four solar installations and their accompanying Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). While most solar developers might not disclose what it actually costs to buy, install, and connect a solar energy plant, the PPA can be used to reverse-engineer what the costs to install a project are—in some cases. If there are significant hidden subsidies or the developer doesn't care that a PPA price is below cost, then the PPA doesn't tell us a lot.

Two of the four solar installations that the researchers looked at are located at Mohammed Bin Rashid al Maktoum Solar Park (MBR Solar Park). Phase II of the MBR Solar Park is a 200MW installation that was announced in 2015 and secured a PPA for 5.84¢ per kWh. Phase III, announced in June 2017, will add another 800MW to the park and will sell its electricity for 2.99¢ per kWh. Additionally, a May 2017 project in Abu Dhabi called Sweihan will build out 1,177MW and sell that electricity for 2.94¢ per kWh. Finally, Sakaka solar park in Northern Saudi Arabia was announced in March 2018 with a PPA price of 2.34¢ per kWh.

martyb writes:

Robocallers "evolved" to sidestep new call blocking rules, AGs tell FCC:

The Federal Communications Commission should let phone companies get more aggressive in blocking robocalls, 35 state attorneys general told the commission yesterday.

The FCC last year authorized voice service providers to block more types of calls in which the Caller ID has been spoofed or in which the number on the Caller ID is invalid. But the FCC did not go far enough, and robocallers have "evolved" to evade the new rules, the 35 attorneys general wrote in an FCC filing:

One specific method which has evolved recently is a form of illegal spoofing called "neighbor spoofing." A neighbor-spoofed call will commonly appear on a consumer's caller ID with the same area code and local exchange as the consumer to increase the likelihood he/she will answer the call. In addition, consumers have recently reported receiving calls where their own phone numbers appeared on their caller ID. A consumer who answered one such call reported the caller attempted to trick her by saying he was with the phone company and required personal information to verify the account, claiming it had been hacked.

The attorneys general said they "encourage the FCC to adopt rules authorizing providers to block these and other kinds of illegally spoofed calls."

The industry can also make progress simply by using existing frameworks to authenticate legitimate calls and identify illegally spoofed calls, the attorneys general wrote. The FCC should encourage all service providers "to aggressively implement" the STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) protocols, they wrote.

upstart writes:

House passes bill to require minimum standards for airplane seat size, legroom

U.S. House lawmakers passed legislation late Wednesday [October 3] that would give federal regulators the authority to set minimum standards for seat size and leg room on flights.

Tucked inside a 2,000-page funding bill is a provision that gives the Federal Aviation Administration a year to establish minimum pitch, width and length on airplane seats to ensure they are safe for passengers. The legislation, which funds the FAA for the next five years, passed 398-23 in the House and now goes to the Senate.

The proposed law is designed to ensure that what have become increasingly cramped planes can be evacuated quickly in an emergency. Current FAA rules require airlines to evacuate in 90 seconds or less.

That policy hasn't been updated significantly in almost two decades. Investigators at the Department of Transportation, which oversees the FAA, said in June that they plan to study whether the FAA is ensuring that today's more crowded aircraft meet federal evacuation standards.

Commercial airplane cabins have become more cramped as airlines fit more seats on board to increase profits and spread out costs among more travelers. Several carriers have reconfigured their planes to not only include more seats but also smaller lavatories in some cases.

Seat pitch, a proxy for legroom, on commercial airplanes measured about 35 inches in the middle of the 20th century, but that's now around 31 inches, according to SeatGuru. Some budget airlines, like Spirit, offer 28 inches of seat pitch.

[...] The bill also requires a government study of whether airlines' shrinking or reducing bathrooms in favor of more seats on board creates problems for passengers accessing lavatories.

Before going to vote, lawmakers scrapped a provision that would determine whether airline fees, such as those to change a travel date, are reasonable.

WATCH: It's not just your eyes. Airline seats really are getting smaller.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Publisher drops Tronc name, reverts to Tribune Publishing

The US newspaper group known as Tronc announced Thursday it was reverting back to its old name Tribune Publishing, two years after a rebranding effort that drew widespread derision.

The publisher of the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun and other newspapers gave no reason for the change, but the name Tronc—a moniker which stood for Tribune Online Content—was ridiculed both within and outside the news industry.

[...] In July, the company announced it would be cutting half the newsroom staff at the Daily News, the iconic New York tabloid.

Tronc sold its best-known newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, to biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong in June. Some reports said it has been in talks with another newspaper chain, McClatchy, owner of the Miami Herald, Kansas City Star and others.

Original Submission

"upstart" writes:

The military chooses which rockets it wants built for the next decade

On Wednesday, the US Air Force awarded its much-anticipated new round of "Launch Service Agreements," which provide funds to rocket companies to complete development of their boosters. There were three winners:

• United Launch Services: $967,000,000 for the development of the Vulcan Centaur launch system.
• Northrop Grumman: $791,601,015 for development of the Omega launch system
• Blue Origin: $500,000,000 for the development of the New Glenn launch system

At least two other companies were believed to be in the running for these awards, as they won grants during an earlier round of funding in 2016. It was not a surprise to see Aerojet Rocketdyne fail to win an award, as that company does not appear to have a customer for its AR1 rocket engine, which the military initially supported. It was something of a surprise not to see SpaceX win an award.

[...] These are hugely consequential awards for the rocket companies. Essentially the US Air Force, which launches more complex, heavy payloads than any other entity in the world, believes these boosters will have a significant role to play in those missions during the next decade. And when the military has confidence in your vehicle, commercial satellite contracts are more likely to follow as well.

"upstart" writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women.

The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters.

Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to five stars - much like shoppers rate products on Amazon, some of the people said.

[...] But by 2015, the company realized its new system was not rating candidates for software developer jobs and other technical posts in a gender-neutral way.

cafebabe writes:

I previously reviewed Rudy Rucker's Ware Tetralogy and Postsingular and found that Rudy Rucker's best work comes after ideas had the most time to percolate. Postsingular was a relative dud, although still far superior to Neal Stephenson's REAMDE. In contrast, Rainbows End is highly recommended. Indeed, it is essential reading for anyone concerned about the progression of software from desktop, web and mobile to augmented reality. The book has a shockingly similar game to Pokémon Go in addition to a plausible mix of tech mergers and new entrants in a near-future universe where smartphones have given way to wearable augmented reality.

Many books, comics and films have covered the purgatory of high school and some have covered the special purgatory of going back to high school (for a re-union or as a student). The film: 21 Jump Street is a particularly silly example of the sub-genre. Rainbows End covers a world leading humanities academic who spends years in the fugue of dementia, responds almost perfectly to medical advances and is enrolled in high school to complete his therapy. While he looks almost perfectly like a 17 year old, his contemporaries remain in decline or have bounced back with far more random results.

Although he has physically recovered, he has lost his razor-sharp insight and biting wit[1]. Like other patients, he finds talents in unrelated areas. His computer fluency, which was sufficient to publish in academic journals, is now 20 years out of date. During this period, laptops have become as thin as paper and also horrendously obsolete. Although the paper-thin laptops can be configured as a variety of legacy desktop environments and legacy web browsers, rendering data from the (almost) ubiquitous wireless network is less successful than accessing the current World Wide Web without images or JavaScript. However, this is only one slice of purgatory.

takyon writes:

Smart aliens might live within 33,000 light-years of Earth. A new study explains why we haven't found them yet.

[An] upcoming study in The Astronomical Journal, which we learned about from MIT Technology Review, suggests humanity has barely sampled the skies, and thus has no grounds to be cynical. According to the paper, all searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI, have examined barely a swimming pool's worth of water from a figurative ocean of signal space. "We haven't really looked much," Shubham Kanodia, a graduate student in astronomy who co-wrote the study, said during a NASA "technosignatures" workshop in Houston, Texas on September 26.

[...] In their study, Kanodia and his colleagues built a mathematical model of what they consider a reasonably sized cosmic haystack.
Their haystack is a sphere of space nearly 33,000 light-years in diameter, centered around Earth. This region captures the Milky Way's bustling core, as well as many giant globular clusters of stars above and below our home galaxy.

They also picked eight dimensions of a search for aliens — factors like signal transmission frequency, bandwidth, power, location, repetition, polarization, and modulation (i.e. complexity) — and defined reasonable limits for each one. "This leads to a total 8D haystack volume of 6.4 × 10¹¹⁶m⁵Hz²s/W," the authors wrote. That is 6.4 followed by 115 zeros — as MIT Technology review described it, "a space of truly gargantuan proportions."