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mechanicjay writes:

The author postulates that the cloud will automate away low-level IT jobs, comparing the situation to automation in manufacturing.

I've been saying for awhile now that we're getting close to a crisis point in the IT world. The mid-tier IT worker is in imminent danger of being automated out of existence, and just like with the vanished factory jobs of the last 30 years, nobody wants to admit it's happening until it's too late.

[...] So how do you know if your job is going to disappear into the cloud? You don't really need me to tell you. You already feel it in your bones. Repetition is a sure warning sign. If you're building the same integrations, patching the same servers over and over again every day, congratulations – you've already become a robot. It's only a matter of time before a small shell script makes it official.

The solution is simple, but not easy: you simply must keep moving. If you don't know how to code, learn - like planting a tree, the best time to start was ten years ago, but the second best time is now. If your technical competence is ten years out of date, don't cling to your hard-won kingdom of decaying knowledge and sabotage any attempts at change: get out and pick up a certification, attend a meetup, something. Anything. At the end of the day, we're all self-taught engineers.

Otherwise, I'll tell you what will happen. The economy will take a small dip, or your department will get re-orged, and you will lose that job as an operations engineer on a legacy SaaS product. You'll look around for a similar job in your area and discover that nobody is hiring people anymore whose skill set is delivering a worse version of what AWS's engineers can do for a fraction of the cost. And by then you won't have the luxury of time to level up your skills.

I'm wondering how I craft an exit from this industry in the next handful of years.

https://forrestbrazeal.com/2019/01/16/cloud-irregular-the-creeping-it-apocalypse/

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Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

In a new paper, education researchers from the University of South Australia (UniSA) say that while the technology may be innovative, ClassDojo encourages an archaic approach to school discipline and neglects a genuinely educational approach to developing behaviour.

Further, they express concern that the app conditions children to accept rising levels of surveillance and control.

"Class Dojo can be understood as yet another data-gathering surveillance technology that is contributing to a culture of surveillance that has become normalised in schools", said Jamie Manolev, a doctoral candidate at UniSA and the study's lead author.

Is ClassDojo helping parents learn what their kids are getting up to at school, or is it normalizing surveillance for students?

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takyon writes:

The End Of Apple (archive)

Apple has had an incredible decade. Since the iPhone debuted in 2007, the company's sales have jumped tenfold. The stock has soared over 700%. And up until last November, it was the world's largest publicly traded company. But two weeks ago, Apple issued a rare warning that shocked investors. For the first time since 2002, the company slashed its earnings forecast. The stock plunged 10% for its worst day in six years. This capped off a horrible few months in which Apple stock crashed about 35% from its November peak. That erased $446 billion in shareholder value—the biggest wipeout of wealth in a single stock ever.

[...] Despite the revenue growth, Apple is selling fewer iPhones every year. In fact, iPhone unit sales peaked way back in 2015. Last year, Apple sold 14 million fewer phones than it did three years ago.

[...] In 2010, you could buy a brand-new iPhone 4 for 199 bucks. In 2014, the newly released iPhone 6 cost 299 bucks. Today the cheapest model of the latest iPhone X costs $1,149! It's a 500% hike from what Apple charged eight years ago. [...] In 1984, Motorola sold the first cell phone for $4,000. The average price for a smartphone today is $320, according to research firm IDC. Cell phone prices have come down roughly 92%. And yet, Apple has hiked its smartphone prices by 500%!

[...] Twelve years ago, only 120 million people owned a cell phone. Today over five billion people own a smartphone, according to IDC. [...] now iPhone price hikes have gone about as far as they can go. [...] A publicly traded company that makes most of its money from selling phones is no longer telling investors how many phones it sells!

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Taking the smarts out of smart TVs would make them more expensive

CES is always a show about the future of TVs, and this year is particularly interesting. Not only are 4K HDR TVs better and cheaper than ever, but the software side of things is opening up in unprecedented ways. Not only are Google Assistant and Alexa control everywhere, but Apple’s embracing the TV industry for the first time: Vizio and LG TVs will support AirPlay 2 and HomeKit, while Samsung TVs will get an iTunes Movies & TV app, as well as AirPlay 2 support.

I just hung out with Vizio CTO Bill Baxter on the Vergecast, and the conversation was wide-ranging and illuminating. Vizio just announced its 2019 lineup of 4K HDR TVs, and they’re as impressive as ever: there’s brighter, bolder colors from quantum-dot technology for the M- and P-series TVs, and the new flagship P-Series Quantum X line has 480 local dimming zones and a wild peak brightness of 2,900 nits. In terms of pure hardware, these are some of the best 4K HDR TVs I’ve seen yet.

[...] And we definitely talked about the pervasive ad tracking that all smart TVs do — especially after I noticed the new Vizio P-Series in my parents’ house seems to ping the network an awful lot. Baxter told me that he thinks Vizio is the industry leader in disclosing what tracking is happening and letting users opt in or out during setup, and that he’s fine if people choose to turn it off. But he was also clear that TV companies are in a cutthroat business, and that companies like Vizio would have to charge higher prices for hardware if they didn’t run content, advertising, and data businesses.

[...] I guess I have a philosophical question. You guys are committed to low price points and you often beat the industry at those price points. Can you hit those price points without the additional data collection that TV does if you don’t have an ad business or a data business on top of the TV?

So that’s a great question. Actually, we should have a beer and have a long, long chat about that.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

An international research team led by physicists from Collaborative Research Centre 1238, 'Control and Dynamics of Quantum Materials' at the University of Cologne has implemented a new variant of the basic double-slit experiment using resonant inelastic X-ray scattering at the European Synchrotron ESRF in Grenoble. This new variant offers a deeper understanding of the electronic structure of solids. Writing in Science Advances, the research group have now presented their results under the title 'Resonant inelastic x-ray incarnation of Young's double-slit experiment'.

The double-slit experiment is of fundamental importance in physics. More than 200 years ago, Thomas Young diffracted light at two adjacent slits, thus generating interference patterns (images based on superposition) behind this double slit. That way, he demonstrated the wave character of light. In the 20th century, scientists have shown that electrons or molecules scattered on a double slit show the same interference pattern, which contradicts the classical expectation of particle behaviour, but can be explained in quantum-mechanical wave-particle dualism. In contrast, the researchers in Cologne investigated an iridium oxide crystal (Ba3CeIr2O9) by means of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS).

The crystal is irradiated with strongly collimated, high-energy X-ray photons. The X-rays are scattered by the iridium atoms in the crystal, which take over the role of the slits in Young's classical experiment. Due to the rapid technical development of RIXS and a skilful choice of crystal structure, the physicists were now able to observe the scattering on two adjacent iridium atoms, a so-called dimer.

'The interference pattern tells us a lot about the scattering object, the dimer double slit', says Professor Markus Grueninger, who heads the research group at the University of Cologne. In contrast to the classical double-slit experiment, the inelastically scattered X-ray photons provide information about the excited states of the dimer, in particular their symmetry, and thus about the dynamic physical properties of the solid.

Resonant inelastic x-ray incarnation of Young’s double-slit experiment (open, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aav4020) (DX)

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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for takyon

Aerospace startup making 3D-printed rockets now has a launch site at America’s busiest spaceport

America’s busiest spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida, is about to get a new tenant: a startup that shares SpaceX’s ambitious plans of turning humans into a multiplanetary species. The new occupant is LA-based launch provider Relativity Space, a company that wants to revolutionize how rockets are manufactured through the use of fully automated 3D printing. The company will soon have its very own launch site at the Cape for its future 3D-printed vehicles.

Thanks to a new deal with the US Air Force, Relativity will be taking over a site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station called LC-16. It’s a pad that was once used by the US military to launch Titan and Pershing ballistic missiles. But since the late 1980s, LC-16 has been dormant. The Air Force picked Relativity to move into the area after a very competitive bidding process, and the company will modify the pad to suit its rocket technology. “Getting the launch site agreement was a huge checkmark,” Tim Ellis, co-founder and CEO of Relativity Space, tells The Verge. “That was the final infrastructure piece we need to have a clear path toward launching.”

Over the last year, Relativity has quickly established itself as a serious player in the commercial space industry. The company, which was founded in 2016, has raised more than $45 million in funding. It also has multiple workspaces in Los Angeles, and it’s currently using facilities at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi to test the Aeon engine it’s been working on. As of now, Relativity has done 124 test fires of its rocket engine, in pursuit of launching the company’s first rocket by 2020.

[...] Relativity’s goal is to disrupt the entire process of manufacturing rockets. “For the last 60 years, the way rockets have been built hasn’t really changed,” says Ellis. Instead of relying on the traditional, complicated assembly line of machines and people sculpting and piecing together parts of a vehicle, Relativity wants to make building a rocket almost entirely automated. The trick? Using giant 3D printers that can create all of the parts needed to build a rocket — from the engines to the propellant tanks and structure.

canopic jug writes:

Researcher Ruben Verborgh explains how to re-decentralize the World-Wide Web, for good this time. He argues that decentralization is foremost about choice and thus people should be free to join large or small communities and talks up Solid as a primary option.

Originally designed as a decentralized network, the Web has undergone a significant centralization in recent years. In order to regain freedom and control over the digital aspects of our lives, we should understand how we arrived at this point and how we can get back on track. This chapter explains the history of decentralization in a Web context, and details Tim Berners-Lee’s role in the continued battle for a free and open Web. The challenges and solutions are not purely technical in nature, but rather fit into a larger socio-economic puzzle, to which all of us are invited to contribute. Let us take back the Web for good, and leverage its full potential as envisioned by its creator.

Earlier on SN:
Tim Berners-Lee Launches Inrupt, Aims to Create a Decentralized Web (2018)
Decentralized Sharing (2014)

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Global wealth inequality widened last year as billionaires increased their fortunes by $2.5 billion per day, anti-poverty campaigner Oxfam said in a new report.

While the poorest half of humanity saw their wealth dwindle by 11%, billionaires' riches increased by 12%. The mega-wealthy have also become a more concentrated bunch. Last year, the top 26 wealthiest people owned $1.4 trillion, or as much as the 3.8 billion poorest people. The year before, it was the top 43 people.

[...] To address many of these ills, Oxfam advocated raising taxes. It estimated that a 1% wealth tax would be enough to educate 262 million out of school children and to save 3.3 million lives. As of 2015 returns, Oxfam says that only four cents in every tax dollar collected globally came from tariffs on wealth, such as inheritance or property. The report also claims that the rich are hiding $7.6 trillion in offshore accounts

Previously: Only 1% of World's Population Grabbed 82% of all 2017 Wealth

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The strange orbits of some objects in the farthest reaches of our solar system, hypothesised by some astronomers to be shaped by an unknown ninth planet, can instead be explained by the combined gravitational force of small objects orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, say researchers.

The alternative explanation to the so-called 'Planet Nine' hypothesis, put forward by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the American University of Beirut, proposes a disc made up of small icy bodies with a combined mass as much as ten times that of Earth. When combined with a simplified model of the solar system, the gravitational forces of the hypothesised disc can account for the unusual orbital architecture exhibited by some objects at the outer reaches of the solar system.

[...] "The Planet Nine hypothesis is a fascinating one, but if the hypothesised ninth planet exists, it has so far avoided detection," said co-author Antranik Sefilian, a PhD student in Cambridge's Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. "We wanted to see whether there could be another, less dramatic and perhaps more natural, cause for the unusual orbits we see in some TNOs. We thought, rather than allowing for a ninth planet, and then worry about its formation and unusual orbit, why not simply account for the gravity of small objects constituting a disc beyond the orbit of Neptune and see what it does for us?"

[...] Earlier attempts to estimate the total mass of objects beyond Neptune have only added up to around one-tenth the mass of Earth. However, in order for the TNOs to have the observed orbits and for there to be no Planet Nine, the model put forward by Sefilian and Touma requires the combined mass of the Kuiper Belt to be between a few to ten times the mass of Earth. [...] "It's also possible that both things could be true -- there could be a massive disc and a ninth planet. With the discovery of each new TNO, we gather more evidence that might help explain their behaviour."

Shepherding in a Self-Gravitating Disk of Trans-Neptunian Objects

Related: CU Boulder Researchers Say Collective Gravity, Not Planet Nine, Explains Orbits of Detached Objects

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Fecal transplants have become routine treatment for nasty recurrent diarrheal infections, but trials for other conditions have hit a bum note. Now, scientists have re-examined the evidence.

Time and again, they found one donor whose stool was substantially more likely to lead to clinical improvement than others in the same trial. These 'super-donors' can provide the necessary bacteria to restore gut chemicals that are lacking in illnesses like IBD and diabetes, according to a new review published in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. With Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis, cancers, asthma, allergies and heart disease all associated with changes to gut bacteria as well, understanding what makes a fecal super donor could make poop the new panacea.

[...] "We see transplants from super-donors achieve clinical remission rates of perhaps double the remaining average. Our hope is that if we can discover how this happens, then we can improve the success of fecal transplantation and even trial it for new microbiome-associated conditions like Alzheimer's, multiple sclerosis and asthma."

[...] "It is well-known that responders typically exhibit a higher microbial diversity than non-responders. In line with these observations, a larger number of species in the donor stool has been shown to be one of the most significant factors influencing fecal transplantation outcome," O'Sullivan explains.

In particular, super donor stool tends to have high levels of specific 'keystone species'. These are bacteria which produce chemicals whose lack in the host gut contributes to disease.

"In inflammatory bowel disease and diabetes for example, keystone species that are associated with prolonged clinical remission produce butyrate -- a chemical with specialized functions in regulating the immune system and energy metabolism."

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Twitter said it had discovered a security flaw which meant "protected" tweets became public when some changes were made to accounts.

Anyone who updated the email address linked to their account between November 2014 and January 2019 could have had messages exposed, it said.

Twitter said it had started to let affected users know about the bug.

It added that it had turned the protections back on for Android users who had inadvertently switched them off.

Twitter said it was also issuing a public notice about the error because it could not confirm the exact number of accounts that had been affected and wanted to reach those it could not identify by an internal investigation.

[...] Twitter said it fixed the flaw on 14 January and would share more information if it became available.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Websites Can Exploit Browser Extensions to Steal User Data

While web applications are bound by the Same Origin Policy (SOP) and cannot access data from other web applications unless mechanisms such as Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) are implemented into both, browser extensions are not subject to the same rule, meaning they can read and write data on web applications.

The extensions also have access to a broad range of sensitive user information, including browsing history, bookmarks, credentials (cookies) and list of installed extensions, and can download files and store them on the user’s device.

Browser extensions and web applications are executed in separate contexts, but they can interact by exchanging messages, regardless of the browser. This allows web applications to exploit extension privileged capabilities and steal sensitive user information, Dolière Francis Somé from the Université Côte d'Azur, Inria, France, says in a research paper (PDF).

The researcher analyzed the communication interfaces exposed to web applications by Chrome, Firefox, and Opera browser extensions and discovered that many of them can be exploited for access to privileged capabilities. 

“Through extensions’ APIs, web applications can bypass SOP and access user data on any other web application,” Somé explains.

“Our results demonstrate that the communications between browser extensions and web applications pose serious security and privacy threats to browsers, web applications and more importantly to users,” the researcher continues.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The Trump administration’s so-called “race” with China to build new fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks is speeding toward a network vulnerable to Chinese (and other) cyberattacks. So far, the Trump administration has focused on blocking Chinese companies from being a part of the network, but these efforts are far from sufficient. We cannot allow the hype about 5G to overshadow the absolute necessity that it be secure.

[...] “It is imperative that America be first in fifth-generation (5G) wireless technologies,” President Trump wrote in an October Presidential Memorandum of instructions to federal agencies. While the administration, especially the Trump Federal Communications Commission (F.C.C.), makes much of how the 5G “race” with China is a matter of national security, not enough effort is being put into the security of the network itself. Nowhere in the president’s directive, for instance, was there a word about protecting the cybersecurity of the new network.

As the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee told him in November^[pdf], “the cybersecurity threat now poses an existential threat to the future of the Nation.” Last January, the brightest technical minds in the intelligence community, working with the White House National Security Council (N.S.C.), warned of the 5G cybersecurity threat. When the proposed solutions included security through a federally-owned network backbone, the wireless industry screamed in protest. The chairman of the Trump F.C.C. quickly echoed the industry line that “the market, not government, is best positioned to drive innovation and leadership.” Government ownership may not be practicable, but the concerns in the N.S.C. report have been dismissed too readily.

Worse than ignoring the warnings, the Trump administration has repealed existing protections. Shortly after taking office, the Trump F.C.C. removed a requirement imposed by the Obama F.C.C. that the 5G technical standard must be designed from the outset to withstand cyberattacks. For the first time in history, cybersecurity was being required as a forethought in the design of a new network standard — until the Trump F.C.C. repealed it. The Trump F.C.C. also canceled a formal inquiry seeking input from the country’s best technical minds about 5G security, retracted an Obama-era F.C.C. white paper about reducing cyberthreats, and questioned whether the agency had any responsibility for the cybersecurity of the networks they are entrusted with overseeing.

The simple fact is that our wireless networks are not as secure as they could be because they weren’t designed to withstand the kinds of cyberattacks that are now common. This isn’t the fault of the companies that built the networks, but a reflection that when the standards for the current fourth-generation (4G) technology were set years ago, cyberattacks were not a front-and-center concern.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Windows 10 Mobile support ending: Microsoft says go to iOS or Android

Are you among the few people left still using a Windows 10 Mobile phone? Even Microsoft has been suggesting that your time to embrace an iPhone or Android handset is long overdue.

This is the final year Microsoft will provide "support" for Windows 10 Mobile, and the company has published a page where you can learn more about nursing your device toward its final days.

Yes, the handset should continue to work after Dec. 10, 2019, the last official day for product and security updates. After that, though, the phone is likely on borrowed time, though Microsoft says automatic or manual creation of new device backups for settings and some applications will continue for three more months, ending March 10, 2020. For that matter, some services including photo uploads and restoring a device from an existing device backup may continue to work for up to a year more.

Still, for most of you, you'll want to start the long goodbye now. And for some versions of Windows Mobile the end of the line comes as soon as June, so consult that online support page for details.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

A Dutch surgeon formally disciplined for her medical negligence has won a legal action to remove Google search results about her case in a landmark "right to be forgotten" ruling.

The doctor's registration on the register of healthcare professionals was initially suspended by a disciplinary panel because of her postoperative care of a patient. After an appeal, this was changed to a conditional suspension under which she was allowed to continue to practise.

But the first results after entering the doctor's name in Google continued to be links to a website containing an unofficial blacklist, which it was claimed amounted to "digital pillory". It was heard that potential patients had found the blacklist on Google and discussed the case on a web forum.

Google and the Dutch data privacy watchdog, Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens, initially rejected attempts to have the links removed on the basis that the doctor was still on probation and the information remained relevant.

However, in what is said to be the first right to be forgotten case involving medical negligence by a doctor, the district court of Amsterdam subsequently ruled the surgeon had "an interest in not indicating that every time someone enters their full name in Google's search engine, (almost) immediately the mention of her name appears on the blacklist of doctors, and this importance adds more weight than the public's interest in finding this information in this way".

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/21/dutch-surgeon-wins-landmark-right-to-be-forgotten-case-google

Original Submission