SoylentNews

realDonaldTrump writes:

San Francisco could become the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition technology, criticized as biased by lawmakers and privacy advocates.

A new bill unveiled on Tuesday, known as the Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance, states that the risks of the controversial technology "substantially outweigh...its purported benefits, and the technology will exacerbate racial injustice and threaten our ability to live free of continuous government monitoring."

https://foxnews.com/tech/san-francisco-could-ban-facial-recognition-technology-becoming-first-us-city-to-do-so

Original Submission

Facebook loses Snopes as a fact-checker - CNET

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Snopes said Friday that it won't be renewing its fact-checking partnership with Facebook, which kicked off at the end of 2016 to help curb the spread of misinformation.

"At this time we are evaluating the ramifications and costs of providing third-party fact-checking services, and we want to determine with certainty that our efforts to aid any particular platform are a net positive for our online community, publication and staff," Snopes said in a post on its site.

The fact-checking platform said it hasn't ruled out working with Facebook in the future, and hopes to continue to discuss ways to combat misinformation. Snopes also said it hopes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg meets with fact checkers following his 2019 resolution to "host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society."

Facebook has faced scrutiny for not taking more action against fake news and misinformation, including interference by Russian trolls during the 2016 US presidential election. Last year, the social network landed in hot water after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, a digital consultancy linked to the Trump presidential campaign, improperly accessed data from as many as 87 million Facebook users.

"We value the work that Snopes has done, and respect their decision as an independent business," a Facebook spokesperson said. "Fighting misinformation takes a multi-pronged approach from across the industry. We are committed to fighting this through many tactics, and the work that third-party fact-checkers do is a valued and important piece of this effort."

Facebook says it has relationships with 34 fact-checking partners around the world for content in 16 languages, and it plans to add new partners and languages this year.

Also at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-01/facebook-loses-fact-checking-group-snopes-after-two-years

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Statin therapy reduces risk of major cardiovascular events irrespective of age

Statin therapy reduces major vascular events, and a new meta-analysis shows this is the case even in patients over 75 years of age. The research summarizes evidence from 28 randomized controlled trials, including 186,854 patients, 14,483 of whom were aged over 75.

A meta-analysis finds that despite less evidence in the over 75s than in younger patients, statins reduce the risk of vascular events in older people. The research found no adverse effects of statin therapy on non-vascular mortality or cancer. Statin therapy reduces major vascular events, and a new meta-analysis shows this is the case even in patients over 75 years of age. The research, published in The Lancet, summarises evidence from 28 randomised controlled trials, including 186,854 patients, 14,483 of whom were aged over 75.

Irrespective of age, statins reduced risks of major vascular events by about a fifth per 1 mmol/L reduction in LDL cholesterol. For major coronary events the overall reduction was about a quarter per 1 mmol/L reduction overall, but ranged from about 30% in those aged 75. The relative risk reductions for stroke and for coronary revascularisation (coronary stenting or bypass surgery) were similar in all age groups.

Dr Jordan Fulcher of the Cholesterol Treatment Trialists' (CTT) Collaboration, who is based at the University of Sydney NHMRC Clinical Trials Centre, Australia, says: "Statins are a useful and affordable drug that reduce heart attacks and strokes in older patients. Until now there has been an evidence gap and we wanted to look at their efficacy and safety in older people. Our analysis indicates that major cardiovascular events were reduced by about a fifth, per mmol/L lower LDL cholesterol, by statin therapy across all age groups. Despite previous concerns we found no adverse effect on cancer or non-vascular mortality in any age group."

Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs that are widely prescribed to patients at increased risk of heart attacks or strokes. Evidence from randomised trials has shown that statin therapy reduces this risk among a wide range of individuals but there has been uncertainty about their benefits in older people.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Judge blocks Yahoo data breach payout

A judge has rejected Yahoo's attempt to draw a line under a series of breaches it experienced between 2013 and 2016. The firm had proposed a payout to lawyers acting on behalf of affected US and Israeli users. But while the deal said the attorneys could claim up to $37.5m (£28.5m) in fees and costs, it did not disclose the sum reserved for victims. The California judge also objected to Yahoo being too vague about what remedial steps it was taking.

Details of the ruling were first reported by the Courthouse News Service, which has also published the decision in full.

Judge Lucy Koh has form in dealing with contentious cases involving tech giants. She previously oversaw a high-profile patent dispute between Apple and Samsung, and has also presided over headline-making cases involving YouTube, Qualcomm and Tesla.

The Yahoo class action lawsuit specifically covers three data breaches that affected the web portal's users' personal information:

• a 2013 event in which hackers were able to access all 3 billion Yahoo accounts
• a 2014 attack, which the firm said had affected more than 500 million accounts
• a breach that happened between 2015-16, in which the plaintiffs allege that the data stolen in 2014 was used to gain access to specific user accounts

The lawyers pursuing the case noted that Yahoo had repeatedly delayed notifying the public of the incidents until some time after it had become aware of them.

In one instance, the business acknowledged it had paid for data from millions of its hacked accounts that had been advertised on the dark web, but disputed claims that it had failed to prevent the information being purchased by others. Among the evidence presented to the court was a report submitted by the plaintiffs that alleged there had been further breaches dating back to 2008 involving "several million accounts", which Judge Koh noted that Yahoo continued to deny.

[...] The judge first expressed reservations about the settlement at a hearing in November, when she complained that she had been unable to "figure out the total estimated sum" being promised.

And on Monday, she formally rejected the deal.

• Yahoo 2013 data breach hit 'all three billion accounts'
• Yahoo 'hacker-for-hire' pleads guilty
• US charges Russian spies over Yahoo breach

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

A lawyer is suing Apple over FaceTime bug, says it let someone listen in on sworn testimony

A Houston lawyer has filed a lawsuit against Apple over a security vulnerability that let people eavesdrop on iPhones using FaceTime.

The bug went viral on Monday evening after news outlets, including CNBC, verified that one person was able to place a FaceTime video call to another person and, using the exploit, was able to listen in or see video of the recipient of the call, even if they didn't answer. Attorney Larry Williams II says he heard about the bug on or before Sunday.

His lawsuit, filed Monday in Harris County, Texas, alleges that Apple "failed to exercise reasonable care" and that Apple "knew, or should have known, that its Product would cause unsolicited privacy breaches and eavesdropping." It alleged Apple did not adequately test its software and that Apple was "aware there was a high probability at least some consumers would suffer harm."

The suit says that Williams was "undergoing a private deposition with a client when this defective product breached allowed for the recording" of the conversation.

Williams claimed this caused "sustained permanent and continuous injuries, pain and suffering and emotional trauma that will continue into the future" and that Williams "lost ability to earn a living and will continued to be so in the future."

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Many customers at a small town grocery store in Alberta had trouble unlocking their cars, while others had their car alarms going off mysteriously, since early January. According to the CBC, after trial-and-error of turning off electricity to nearby buildings and calling in the federal government for assistance, the source of the interference has been traced back to "faulty consumer electronic equipment stuck in transmit mode".

The story of the original mystery can be found here.

Key fobs that suddenly won't unlock vehicles. Cars that won't start. Alarms that go off for no reason and can't be quieted. Something mysterious is thwarting drivers outside a grocery store in the small Alberta town of Carstairs — and it's sparking all kinds of theories.

The problems have been happening for weeks in the parking lot outside the Westview Co-op grocery store in Carstairs, a town of about 4,000 about 60 kilometres north of Calgary.

[Ed. note: key fob: A passive wireless electronic device that usually uses RFID technology to control access to buildings, containers, computers, etc. by being placed near a detector.
Remote keyless system (RKS):

Widely used in automobiles, an RKS performs the functions of a standard car key without physical contact. When within a few yards of the car, pressing a button on the remote can lock or unlock the doors, and may perform other functions. A remote keyless system can include both a remote keyless entry system (RKE), which unlocks the doors, and a remote keyless ignition system (RKI), which starts the engine.

Updated: 20190202_131403 UTC]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Foxconn may drop plans to build flat screens in Wisconsin

Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn may drop plans to build flat screen panels at a Wisconsin plant for which it was promised $4 billion in state and local tax dollars. But the company says it is going ahead with developing the Wisconsin property and still expects to hire up to 13,000 workers.

The plant and its expensive incentive package has been controversial from the time it was announced in 2017. It was negotiated during the tenure of former Republican Governor Scott Walker, who lost his re-election bid last year. The incentive package was one of the issues in the campaign.

[...] A top executive at Foxconn told Reuters that the company determined a US plant "can't compete" with lower-cost flat panel plants elsewhere in the world.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

After bans from Apple and Google, Sarahah debuts Enoff, an iOS app for anonymous feedback at work

Sarahah, the anonymous messaging app founded in Saudi Arabia that became an unexpected viral sensation with teens, clocking up over 300 million registered users before getting banned by Apple and Google over bullying, is making a return to the App Store — but not as you might think.

The startup has launched a new, free iOS app called Enoff (pronounced "enough") aimed at organizations, tapping into the wave of employee activism and speaking out about unfair practices to provide a way for people in a team to give anonymous, one-way feedback to bosses and human resources reps. An Android version of Enoff is coming "very soon," according to CEO and founder Zain al-Alabdin Tawfiq.

Available also on the web, the aim is to provide a way to give feedback in cases of harassment, corruption and other tricky workplace situations where employees might fear repercussions for speaking out.

Easy way to monetize app: allow bosses to pay to unmask users.

Also at Wired.

Previously: Hit App Sarahah Quietly Uploads Your Address Book

Related: Anonymous Social App Raises Controversy on College Campuses
Square Hires Yik Yak's Engineers, Leaving Fewer Than 10 Employees Behind
Japan's Recruit Holdings Co. Acquires Glassdoor for $1.2 Billion

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

FBI, Air Force investigators mapped North Korean botnet to aid shutdown

On January 30, the US Department of Justice announced that it had partnered with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations to engage in a campaign to "map and further disrupt" a botnet tied to North Korean intelligence activities detailed in an indictment unsealed last September. Search warrants obtained by the FBI and AFOSI allowed the agencies to essentially join the botnet, creating servers that mimicked the beacons of the malware.

"While the Joanap botnet was identified years ago and can be defeated with antivirus software," said United States Attorney Nick Hanna, "we identified numerous unprotected computers that hosted the malware underlying the botnet. The search warrants and court orders announced today as part of our efforts to eradicate this botnet are just one of the many tools we will use to prevent cybercriminals from using botnets to stage damaging computer intrusions."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Vice Media to Reorganize, Lay Off 10 Percent of Staff

Vice Media is planning a reorganization that will include laying off about 10 percent of its workforce as the once high-flying startup looks to rein in an unwieldy business that grew quickly during the height of the digital boom.

Around 250 jobs are expected to be cut, a company spokeswoman tells The Hollywood Reporter, as the 2,500-person Vice reduces redundancies internationally and reorients to focus on growth areas like film and television production and branded content. All departments at every level are expected to have layoffs, from IT to finance to television.

[...] It is crucial that Vice, which the Wall Street Journal reported in November was on track to bring revenue between $600 million and $650 million in 2018, become profitable as investors get antsy for the company to find a buyer. Disney took a $157 million write-down on its Vice stake in November.

Also at TechCrunch.

Another link from AC: Newsflash: The Trump Curse? Vice Media Cuts 10% of Staff after HuffingtonPost & BuzzFeed Layoffs

Related: BuzzFeed to Cut 15% of Staff in New Round of Layoffs
Over 1,000 Media Jobs Lost in One Day

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

A gigantic cavity — two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall — growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers' undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change.

Researchers expected to find some gaps between ice and bedrock at Thwaites' bottom where ocean water could flow in and melt the glacier from below. The size and explosive growth rate of the newfound hole, however, surprised them. It's big enough to have contained 14 billion tons of ice, and most of that ice melted over the last three years.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/huge-cavity-in-antarctic-glacier-signals-rapid-decay

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Smartphone users are usually torn between the two choice — Android or iOS. Their dominance is such that other competing OS like Windows, BlackBerry OS, or Symbian have almost been abandoned.Those who don't want either of them can opt for Pine64's Linux phone dubbed the PinePhone which offers good hardware and software at an affordable rate of $149.

The phone's specs aren't great, but it does include a headphone jack (I wonder if it's capable of using the JACK audio system?) and the article notes that it may provide physical switches for disabling various components. The company behind it, Pine64, also produce the PineBook Linux laptop, which also use an ARM processor.

Source: https://fossbytes.com/pinephone-linux-smartphone-149/

Related: Kickstarter: Pine A64, Cheaper and More Powerful than Raspberry Pi 2 Model B

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2019/02/01/buddy-holly-plane-crash-clear-lake-iowa/2742144002/

One of the first tragedies to strike rock 'n' roll took place 60 years ago, when a plane carrying three of the genre's biggest stars crashed into an icy field north of Clear Lake, Iowa.

Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, along with pilot Roger Peterson, died Feb. 3, 1959, following a Winter Dance Party tour stop at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

[...] Some called it the tour from hell, with routing that zig-zagged from Wisconsin to Minnesota to Iowa and back again to Minnesota. Tour buses, traveling 300-plus miles on a given night through the frozen rural Midwest, broke down often, leaving the musicians sick and frostbitten.

https://eu.greenbaypressgazette.com/story/entertainment/music/2019/01/25/buddy-hollys-winter-dance-party-lives-green-bay-60-years-later/2602426002/

https://siouxcityjournal.com/lifestyles/local/remembering-the-day-the-music-died-years-later/article_b3a07b51-3277-57ce-b3a1-c41e38f0b996.html

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/01/27/sixty-years-later-remembering-day-music-died

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Penn Engineer's 'Metallic Wood' Has the Strength of Titanium and the Density of Water

High-performance golf clubs and airplane wings are made out of titanium, which is as strong as steel but about twice as light. These properties depend on the way a metal's atoms are stacked, but random defects that arise in the manufacturing process mean that these materials are only a fraction as strong as they could theoretically be. An architect, working on the scale of individual atoms, could design and build new materials that have even better strength-to-weight ratios.

In a new study published in Nature Scientific Reports [open, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36901-3], researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have done just that. They have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium but four to five times lighter.

The empty space of the pores, and the self-assembly process in which they're made, make the porous metal akin to a natural material, such as wood.

And just as the porosity of wood grain serves the biological function of transporting energy, the empty space in the researchers' "metallic wood" could be infused with other materials. Infusing the scaffolding with anode and cathode materials would enable this metallic wood to serve double duty: a plane wing or prosthetic leg that's also a battery.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Virus lurking inside banana genome has been destroyed with CRISPR

Genome editing has been used to destroy a virus that lurks inside many of the bananas grown in Africa. Other teams are trying to use it to make the Cavendish bananas sold in supermarkets worldwide resistant to a disease that threatens to make it impossible to grow this variety commercially in future. The banana streak virus can not only be spread from plant to plant by insects like most plant viruses. It also integrates its DNA into the banana's genome. In places like west Africa, where bananas are a staple food, most bananas now have the virus lurking inside them.

[...] But Leena Tripathi at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Kenya has now used the CRISPR genome editing method to target and destroy the viral DNA inside the genome of a banana variety called Gonja Manjaya.

The plan is to use these plants to breed virus-free plants for farmers. Her team is also using CRISPR to make the bananas resistant to the virus, so they are not simply re-infected. But the legal status of genome-edited plants in the west African countries where Gonja Manjaya is grown remains uncertain. "I think right now they are in discussions about whether it requires legislation," says Tripathi.

The banana streak virus does not infect the popular Cavendish banana. But a fungal strain called Tropical Race 4 is devastating Cavendish plantations as it spreads around the world. Before the 1960s the most popular banana was the reportedly more delicious Gros Michel, which farmers had to stop growing because of the spread of another fungal strain called Tropical Race 1.

PAPER (DOI: 10.1038/s42003-019-02) (DX)

Original Submission