SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

It's already one of the coldest and snowiest starts to the winter season in parts of the Northeast, Midwest and Plains, and we haven't finished November yet.

According to the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index (AWSSI) from the Midwest Regional Climate Center, 74 cities from New England to the Plains and Rockies have seen an extreme season-to-date of cold and snow as of Nov. 27.

[...]

Cities categorized as having an extreme winter, so far, ranked in the 99th percentile of the index for Nov. 27.

A combination of persistent cold from the Northeast to the Plains and a pair of expansive winter storms, Avery and then Bruce, gave this winter season a fast start.

https://weather.com/news/weather/news/2018-11-27-winter-misery-index-awssi-extreme-start-november-2018

Solar cycle 24 was exceptionally weak and cycle 25 is shaping up to be similar. Some have predicted that, if the trend continues, Earth may experience a "mini ice age" soon due to increased cloud formation reflecting the warming light from the sun: https://astronomynow.com/2015/07/17/diminishing-solar-activity-may-bring-new-ice-age-by-2030/

Original Submission

NASA's InSight successfully lands on Mars after 'seven minutes of terror'

AnonTechie writes:

NASA's latest Mars lander, InSight, successfully touched down on the surface of the Red Planet this afternoon, surviving an intense plunge through the Martian atmosphere. It marks the eighth picture-perfect landing on Mars for NASA, adding to the space agency's impressive track record of putting spacecraft on the planet. And now, InSight's two-year mission has begun, one that entails listening for Marsquakes to learn about the world's interior.

InSight successfully lands on Mars

[Also Covered By]:

CNN

The Guardian

MARS InSight Mission

[Mission Page]: InSight Mars Lander

MarCO CubeSats Successfully Collect and Relay Data During Mars Flyby

takyon writes:

Success of Tiny Mars Probes Heralds New Era of Deep-Space Cubesats

The era of the interplanetary cubesat has definitively dawned.

Less than seven months ago, no tiny spacecraft had ever voyaged beyond Earth orbit. But two briefcase-size probes just blazed a trail all the way to Mars, covering 301 million deep-space miles (484 million kilometers) and beaming home data from NASA's InSight lander during the latter's successful touchdown on the Red Planet Monday (Nov. 26).

The tiny NASA craft, known as MarCO-A and MarCO-B, even photographed Mars and helped researchers collect some data about the planet's atmosphere during their flyby, mission team members said.

Hopefully this new era will include flybys or orbits of all the large asteroids and dwarf planets (Eris, Sedna, Makemake, Haumea, etc.)

Previously: NASA to Focus on Small Satellites
NASA Selects CubeSat and SmallSat Mission Concept Studies
NASA's InSight Mars Mission Rescheduled for 2018
NASA Launches InSight Mission to Study the Interior of Mars
CubeSats -- En Route to Mars with InSight -- Snap Another "Pale Blue Dot" Image
MarCO CubeSat Takes Image of Mars From 12.8 Million Kilometers Away
Mars InSight Lander on Course for Monday Touchdown at 2:54 PM EST (19:54 UTC)
Watch Online | Landing – NASA's InSight Mars Lander

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

takyon writes:

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Pledges to Investigate Video Game Loot Boxes

Federal Trade Commission chairman Joseph Simons on Tuesday said he would investigate video game loot boxes to ensure that children are being protected and parents are educated on the matter.

Simons testified Tuesday before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and Data Security about the commission's work. Following his testimony, a number of senators asked Simons questions on an array of topics.

Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH), who brought up the issue of loot boxes in video games earlier this year, asked the FTC to launch the investigation and Simons confirmed he would.

The request comes about nine months after Hassan sent a letter to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board asking for the group to review the ratings process as it relates to loot boxes, examine the marketing of loot boxes to children, and put together best practices for developers around the toxic form of microtransactions. The senator also asked the board to conduct a study that further delves into the reach and impact of loot boxes in games. At the time, she said if they didn't take sufficient action she would ask the FTC to get involved.

"In video games, a loot box (sometimes loot crate or prize crate, among other names) is a consumable virtual item which can be redeemed to receive a randomized selection of further virtual items, ranging from simple customization options for a player's avatar or character, to game-changing equipment such as weapons and armor. A loot box is typically a form of monetization, with players either buying the boxes directly or receiving the boxes during play and later buying "keys" with which to redeem them."

Related: Belgium Moving to Ban "Loot Boxes" Throughout Europe, Hawaii Could Restrict Sale to Minors
Are Loot Boxes in Games a Violation of Gambling Laws?
Video Game Loot Boxes are now Considered Criminal Gambling in Belgium
Mobile Gaming is Dominant in the Marketplace / Blame Loot Boxes

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Audio device maker Sennheiser has issued a fix for a monumental software blunder that makes it easy for hackers to carry out man-in-the-middle attacks that cryptographically impersonate any big-name website on the Internet. Anyone who has ever used the company’s HeadSetup for Windows or macOS should take action immediately, even if users later uninstalled the app.

To allow Sennheiser headphones and speaker phones to work seamlessly with computers, HeadSetup establishes an encrypted Websocket with a browser. It does this by installing a self-signed TLS certificate in the central place an operating system reserves for storing browser-trusted certificate authority roots. In Windows, this location is called the Trusted Root CA certificate store. On Macs, it’s known as the macOS Trust Store.

The critical HeadSetup vulnerability stems from a self-signed root certificate installed by version 7.3 of the app that kept the private cryptographic key in a format that could be easily extracted. [...] the sensitive key was encrypted with the passphrase “SennheiserCC” (minus the quotation marks). That passphrase-protected key was then encrypted by a separate AES key and then base64 encoded. The passphrase was stored in plaintext in a configuration file. The encryption key was found by reverse-engineering the software binary.

[...] A later version of the Sennheiser app made a botched attempt to fix the snafu. It too installed a root certificate, but it didn’t include the private key. But in a major omission, the update failed to remove the older root certificate, a failure that caused anyone who had installed the older version to remain susceptible to the trivial TLS forgeries. Also significant, uninstalling the app didn’t remove the root certificates that made users vulnerable.

Source: Original source

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

With California experiencing two years of unprecedented wildfires that have left more than 20,000 homes destroyed and scores dead, the private firefighting business is booming. These brigades work independently from county firefighters; their job is to protect specific homes under contract with insurance companies.

Their work can vary from pushing back flames as they approach properties to reaching the site before the blaze arrives and spraying homes with fire retardant.

But the private forces have generated complaints from some fire departments, who say they don't always coordinate with local crews and amount to one more worry as they try to evacuate residents and battle the blaze.

"From the standpoint of first responders, they are not viewed as assets to be deployed. They're viewed as a responsibility," said Carroll Wills, communications director for California Professional Firefighters, a labor union representing rank-and-file firefighters in the state.

What began more than a decade ago as a white-glove service for homeowners in well-to-do neighborhoods has expanded in recent years as the wildfire danger has increased, said Michael Barry, a spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, a not-for-profit organization that educates the public about the insurance industry.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-private-firefighters-20181127-story.html

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Parents putting together baby registries on Amazon have begun to notice a pesky problem, one that has resulted in parents receiving items they neither listed nor wanted. The online retailer has been placing sponsored products in baby registries, the Wall Street Journal reports, but because the ads look so similar to other registry items, people are purchasing them, unaware that the items weren't added to the registry by parents. Like added items, the sponsored products include an image, rating, price and a "0 of 1 Purchased" tag. The only thing that distinguishes them is a small, gray "Sponsored" label situated just above the item name.

[...] One new dad told the Wall Street Journal that he only realized Amazon had placed sponsored products in his baby registry when the Aveeno bath-time set arrived at his home. He said the ads were "blatantly trying to trick you." "Worst part is a friend spent money on something we didn't want. And Amazon profited," he added. While users can remove these ads from their registries, Amazon reportedly told advertisers that around 60 percent were left in place.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/28/amazon-inserting-sponsored-products-baby-registries/

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

How to melt gold at room temperature | Chalmers

When the tension rises, unexpected things can happen – not least when it comes to gold atoms. Researchers from, among others, Chalmers University of Technology, have now managed, for the first time, to make the surface of a gold object melt at room temperature.​

​Ludvig de Knoop, from Chalmers' Department of Physics, placed a small piece of gold in an electron microscope. Observing it at the highest level of magnification and increasing the electric field step-by-step to extremely high levels, he was interested to see how it influenced the gold atoms. It was when he studied the atoms in the recordings from the microscope, that he saw something exciting. The surface layers of gold had actually melted – at room temperature.

"I was really stunned by the discovery. This is an extraordinary phenomenon, and it gives us new, foundational knowledge of gold," says Ludvig de Knoop.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

BBCTech:

Mr Tinmouth wanted to open a business account to deal with the income and expenditure of some properties that he was letting to tenants.

He applied to Barclays, but the process dragged on and eventually he made a complaint on Twitter.

He even posted an email that he received from the bank which he felt was unprofessional and had to confirm was genuine. The bank urged him to delete this public post.

All this information, together with some personal details that were already available about him online, was enough for fraudsters to mimic the bank and appear to know details of the case.

Reason #7,003 not to use Twitter.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

El Reg:

Baroness Trumpington, a wartime Bletchley Park transcriber who was part of the push to posthumously pardon Alan Turing, has died aged 96.

As the daughter of a society family that had almost been ruined in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Jean Barker left school aged 15 "having never sat an exam but fluent in French, German and Italian," according to the BBC's obituarist.

When the Second World War broke out, her parents, who had retained their society connections despite the stock market crash, found her a post working on former Prime Minister David Lloyd George's farm...

A year later she joined the code-crackers of Bletchley Park, aged 18, transcribing intercepted messages from German submarines. While the code-breakers and the rest of the team at the site did not mix, the future baroness spent her free time socialising at London's key spots for the upper crust, including the Ritz and Claridge's. She told The Daily Telegraph of one "very unsuitable" incident from her time at Bletchley when her team were disciplined after being caught singing the Nazi Party's official anthem, explaining: "You had nothing to do but work so you got up to mischief."

She later entered politics in Margaret Thatcher's government.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Starbucks says it'll block porn on its public Wi-Fi next year

For years, Starbucks has caught flak for not preventing its customers from watching porn on its in-store Wi-Fi. Now the coffee retailer says that next year it will introduce a filter that prevents customers from viewing porn and other explicit material in stores, as first reported by Business Insider.

[...] This week, Enough Is Enough CEO Donna Rice Hughes said Starbucks had failed to protect its customers and follow through with its plan to block explicit content. "By breaking its commitment, Starbucks is keeping the doors wide open for convicted sex offenders and others to fly under the radar from law enforcement and use free, public Wi-Fi services to access illegal child porn and hard-core pornography," she said.

A petition from Enough Is Enough said that public Wi-Fi networks "are attracting pedophiles and sex offenders" and put children at risk.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

The war game that could have ended the world

On 7 November 1983, around 100 senior military officers gathered at Nato headquarters in Brussels to ‘fight’ World War Three. The annual simulation, known as Able Archer, came at the end of a large-scale conventional exercise ­– Autumn Forge – involving tens of thousands of Nato troops across western Europe.

[...] The imagined ‘war’ started when Soviet tanks rolled across the border into Yugoslavia. Scandinavia was invaded next, and soon troops were pouring into Western Europe. Overwhelmed, Nato forces were forced into retreat. A few months after the pretend conflict began, Western governments authorised the use of nuclear weapons.

Role-playing Nato forces launched a single medium range nuclear missile, wiping Ukrainian capital Kiev from the map. It was deployed as a signal, a warning that Nato was prepared to escalate the war. The theory was that this ‘nuclear signalling’ would help cooler heads to prevail. It didn’t work.

By 11 November 1983, global nuclear arsenals had been unleashed. Most of the world was destroyed. Billions were dead. Civilisation ended.

Later that day, the Nato commanders left their building and went home, congratulating themselves on another successful – albeit sobering – exercise. What Western governments only discovered later is that Able Archer 83 came perilously close to instigating a real nuclear war.

Original Submission

stretch611 writes:

According to USA Today:

Stephen Hillenburg, the visionary creator of "SpongeBob SquarePants" died Monday at the age of 57. The cause of death was ALS.

SpongeBob is Nickelodeon's biggest all-time hit, and has aired for nearly two decades...

Hillenburg first parlayed his fascination with ocean life into a career as a biology teacher...

In 1987 he began his career in animation, and from 1993 to 1996 got his start at Nickelodeon on Rocko's Modern Life.

A different story about Spongebob rumors and guest stars is reported here.

News of his death also reported at ABC, Washington Post, and NBC.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

The first global drone standards have been revealed

As drone use grows, rules and regulations remain in flux and vary among jurisdictions. Last month, for instance, the Federal Aviation Administration granted operators of certain drones approval to fly them in controlled airspace in the US, but the UK has an outright ban on using them within a kilometer of airports. To help establish best practices, the International Organization for Standardization has released the first draft set of global standards for drone use.

The draft does suggest no-fly zones around airports and other restricted areas, along with geofencing measures to keep drones away from sensitive locations. The standards also call for drone operators to respect others' privacy and a human intervention fail-safe for all flights. The ISO additionally suggested that training, flight logging and maintenance requirements should be in place, along with data protection rules.

[...] The draft set of standards was released just as the UK's air safety board said about half of air traffic incidents are drone-related. More sets of ISO drone standards will follow, which will cover technical specs, traffic control, and manufacturing quality.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

US Army awards Microsoft with $480 million HoloLens contract

The US Army has awarded Microsoft a $480 million contract to supply the military branch with as many as 100,000 HoloLens augmented reality headsets for training and combat purposes, according to Bloomberg.

Microsoft beat out other leading augmented reality headset companies, like Magic Leap, which announced that it would be joining the bidding process back in September. Microsoft has had the upper hand, focusing primarily on enterprise markets, unlike Magic Leap, which has focused on the barely-existent consumer market. Microsoft has also previously sold some headsets to the military. But this contract would go well beyond its earlier collaboration, and could greatly expand the reach of the headset.

[...] According to Bloomberg, the military-grade headsets would vary extensively from the existing HoloLens design. They would include thermal sensing and night vision and be used in both training and on the battlefield. Microsoft would be expected to provide at least 2,500 units of the headset to the military branch within the next two years.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

CNet:

The technology in smartwatches has come a long way since the early days of wearables, when rudimentary step and calorie counters were about as advanced as the devices got. Now, a new generation of devices is ushering in heart-, sleep- and blood-monitoring functions that push the accuracy of laboratory equipment to your wrist.

In September, Apple introduced an FDA-cleared EKG feature in its Series 4 Watch. The feature, which hasn't gone live yet, warns wearers about abnormal heart rhythms linked to atrial fibrillation. Fitbit and Garmin are developing features that can help detect atrial fibrillation, sleep apnea and other conditions. In April, Garmin integrated the Cardiogram app into its devices. Cardiogram's DeepHeart algorithm has demonstrated high accuracy in detecting atrial fibrillation, hypertension, sleep apnea and diabetes.

[...] The new generation of functions could kick-start the smartwatch category, which has failed to live up to the technology industry's high hopes. High-end devices are taking over from basic fitness trackers, which analysts say is an indication that users want devices that can do more than just count our steps. Better health capabilities could give users, particularly those with medical problems, a reason to strap the devices to their wrist.

Sounds cool, but battery life, battery life, battery life...

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

The first study on the DNA of the ancient inhabitants of Finland has been published, with results indicating that an abundance of genes reached Finland all the way from Siberia.

Genetic material from Siberia has been found in the inhabitants of the Kola Peninsula from as far back as approximately 4,000 years ago, later spreading also to Finland. The study also corroborates the assumption that people genetically similar to the Sámi[*] lived much further south in Finland than today even during the Iron Age.

The genetic samples compared in the study were collected from human bones found in a 3,500-year-old burial place in the Kola Peninsula and the 1,500-year-old lake burial site at Levänluhta in South Ostrobothnia, Finland. All of the samples contained identical Siberian genes.

[...] More information: Thiseas C. Lamnidis et al. "Ancient Fennoscandian genomes reveal origin and spread of Siberian ancestry in Europe", Nature Communications (2018). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07483-5

The results suggest Bronze Age inhabitants of Finland may have had regular contact with people in Northern Siberia, despite the vast distances separating them.

[*] Wikipedia entry on the Sámi people.

Original Submission