SoylentNews

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Soycow

In 1987, a man, a woman, and their daughter attended a Tchaikovsky concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The most notable thing about their outing, all these years later, is something that actually wasn't the least bit unusual: The two women waited in an interminably long line for the bathroom, while the man did not.

What separates their uncomfortable experience from those of innumerable others is that the man in their party was a California state senator. After witnessing just how long his family members had to wait, he introduced legislation to guarantee the state's women more toilets.

In the three decades since, dozens of cities and states have joined the cause of "potty parity," the somewhat trivializing nickname for the goal of giving men and women equal access to public toilets. These legislative efforts, along with changes to plumbing codes that altered the ratio of men's to women's toilets, have certainly helped imbalances in wait times, but they haven't come close to resolving them.

"It still remains a huge problem today, overall," says Kathryn Anthony, an architecture professor at the University of Illinois who has studied the issue for more than a decade. The issue persists for many reasons: the exigencies of real estate, the building codes that govern construction, and, of course, sexism.

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/women-men-bathroom-lines-wait/580993/

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Athletics: Though it may not rank as high in viewership as World Cup Soccer (Football to the rest of the world), the 53rd Super Bowl® is tonight and historically sports (heh!) the largest viewership in the US of any other television broadcast. The game is being held at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia and features the 2-point favorite American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots vying with the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Los Angeles Rams to be crowned the champions of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2018 season.

The game is scheduled to start at 6:30pm EST (2330 UTC) and is being broadcast in the USA on CBS and, apparently, is also available for streaming on-line.

Advertisements: Over the years, it has grown to be a spectacle where the game play is occasionally overshadowed by the advertisements. An advertisement during this year's game sets a new record of over $5 Million for a 30-second spot. Some of the most memorable ads of all time premiered during the Super Bowl®. Who can forget the Macintosh 1984 ad or Michael Jordan and Larry Bird's game of "horse" where "nothing but net" became a meme?

An Experiment: In light of this opportunity, we are going to try something new for SoylentNews. We have set up a channel on our IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server especially for this game. The Patriots are favored to win over the Rams by two points, so the game may prove to be close... discussion about the game IS welcome. We are also offering a venue for people to discuss the ads that are broadcast, in real time. See an ad you thought was lame, say so! Laughed your butt off? Say that, too! The intent is to provide a shared space for the community to watch the game together.

Ground Rules: This is intended to be an enjoyable experience. In the sole discretion of the channel operators, ad hominem attacks, uncivil behavior, trolling, spamming, and politics are all grounds for getting kicked off the channel. Repeated violations will result in a ban from the channel and whatever other steps are deemed necessary to make it an enjoyable place for people to hang out and discuss the game and ads. In short, we are inviting you to our "living room" — have fun, but don't crap on our carpet. Let's put our differences aside and gather together for a shared community experience!

Sorry, no catering is provided, so you'll have to BYOB (bring your own... bacon =).

Details: Use your favorite IRC client or use the convenient link in the left-hand slashbox titled "SoylentNews". If you are new to IRC, these commands may be helpful:

# Pick a name for use on IRC:
/NICK mynickname

# Join the channel (be careful with the spelling!)
/JOIN #SuperBowlLIII

If you have any questions about getting connected, I'd advise joining an hour or so before the game; I'm sure folks will be ready and willing to help.

Lastly, have fun, enjoy the game, and may the best team win!

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

Korean Man who Died in Mexico Returned -- Missing Organs:

The body of a Korean man who died in Mexico has been returned to his family ― without his brain, stomach and heart.

Mexican authorities claim that the man, 35, surnamed Kim, died of natural causes despite a scuffle with other people just before his death. His widow fears that someone is trying to cover up the truth.

[...] According to the widow, Kim and other men were engaged in a fight at a Monterrey karaoke on Jan. 3, which was filmed by surveillance cameras there. In a few minutes, Kim passed out and was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.

"More than a week later, I received the autopsy result that says 'no external injuries.' I was dumbfounded," she wrote on the Cheong Wa Dae website.

[...] She said Mexican police are not investigating the case because Kim died ― on paper ― of natural causes.

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

"The European Commission has received initial reports by Google, Facebook and Twitter on their efforts to fight fake news and offered the trio a pat on the back and an exhortation to work harder — or else." forbes.com/sites/jillgoldsmith/2019/01/29/eu-prods-facebook-google-twitter-in-fight-against-fake-news/

The three Internet giants along with browser company Mozilla and trade associations representing the advertising industry signed a Code of Practice on Disinformation last fall agreeing to take measures against fake news as a crucial European election cycle gets underway.

"There has been some progress, notably in removing fake accounts and limiting the visibility of sites that promote disinformation. However, additional action is needed to ensure full transparency of political ads by the start of the campaign for the European elections in all EU Member States," the organization said in a statement.

Monthly reports will follow from February through May. In a year, at the end of 2019, the Commission will conduct a comprehensive assessment and "should the results prove unsatisfactory ... may propose further actions, including of a regulatory nature."

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Tiny eye movements affect how we see contrast

Researchers previously believed contrast sensitivity function -- the minimum level of black and white that a person needs to detect a pattern -- was mainly dictated by the optics of the eye and processing in the brain. Now, in a study published in the journal eLife, researchers, including Michele Rucci at the University of Rochester, explain that there is another factor at play: contrast sensitivity also depends on small eye movements that a person is not even aware of making.

"Historically these movements have been pretty much ignored," says Rucci, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at Rochester. "But what seems to be happening is that they are contributing to vision in a number of different ways, including our contrast sensitivity function."

When we fix our eyes on a single point, the world may appear stable, but at the microscopic level, our eyes are constantly jittering. These small eye movements, once thought to be inconsequential, are critical to the visual system in helping us reconstruct a scene, Rucci says. "Some scientists believed that because they are so small, the eye movements might not have much impact, but compared to the size of the photoreceptors on the retina, they are huge, and they are changing the input on the retina."

realDonaldTrump writes:

Larry Haines, founder of Austin-based Sunconomy, said his company has partnered with San Francisco residential building company, Forge New, to develop a system called We Print Houses. It will allow them to create bigger homes. They use a unique mobile platform to which they attach a print head.

[...] They also use a specific building method, placing geo-polymer concrete on the inside and outside of a steel beam with insulation in the middle.

"That's how we're meeting code is by being able to insulate and get the structural strength and integrity from slab to wall from wall-to-the-roof system all in one," said Haines.

Ultimately, Haines wants to print a whole house, including the roofs and floors, and sell it, something he says has never been done in the country. He's already obtained the permit to build the first model home in Lago Vista, about 30 miles outside of Austin. Construction would take two months, and safety inspections would be performed similarly to those done with a traditionally built house.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Whopping big viruses prey on human gut bacteria: Largest phages ever found in humans target bacteria associated with hunter-gatherer diets

Some of the largest of these so-called bacteriophages have now been found in the human gut, where they periodically devastate bacteria just as seasonal outbreaks of flu lay humans low, according to a new study led by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

These "megaphages" -- which have genomes about 10 times larger than the average phage and twice as big as any phage previously found in humans -- were found in the human intestinal tract, but only from humans who eat a non-Western, high-fiber, low-fat diet.

Tellingly, they were also found in the guts of baboons and a pig, demonstrating that phages -- which can carry genes that affect human health -- can move between humans and animals and perhaps carry disease.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Archaeologist Annemieke Milks' recently published study, albeit done in 2015, suggests that some extinct hominids probably didn't just stab prey from a close distance, but may have also occasionally threw spears. The study had a group of athletes, particularly strong javelin throwers, throw replicas of a 300,000-year-old wooden spear, one of nine ancient hunting tools discovered at Germany's Schöningen coal mine, at a bale of hay for accuracy.

Many researchers have suspected that Neandertals or their ancestors snuck up on and stabbed prey with the pointed wooden rods. That idea aligns with a popular assumption that Stone Age Homo sapiens had a monopoly on hurling spears at prey. Yet bodies capable of accurate and powerful throwing may have emerged nearly 2 million years ago in Homo erectus (SN Online: 6/26/13). So why not Neandertals?

Now data from high-speed video cameras at Milks' unusual throw-off, held in January 2015 and reported online January 25 in Scientific Reports, suggest that Neandertals might have used the spears for long-range hunting.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Lowe's is shutting down its Iris smart home platform at the end of March

In a move that may seem obvious in retrospect, Lowe's has decided that its Iris smart home platform is not in fact going to take off. Instead, the home improvement-focused retail chain is shutting the service down on March 31st, 2019 and advising all Iris users to kindly avoid taking their no-longer-functioning products back to a Lowe's store. The company says it will however give you some money back in the form of a prepaid Visa card that will help you "migrate to another smart home platform," reads the company's website.

[...] Alternatively, Lowe's says that a number of the products that are compatible with Iris are also compatible with Samsung's SmartThings platform, and SmartThings is apparently agreed to help with the transition process. Some other Iris products use standard protocols like Zigbee and Z-Wave, notes Android Police, meaning they should also work with other platforms beyond SmartThings if you don't feel like trying to get your money back.

Dumb as a bag of hammers.

Related: Couple Accused of Using Lowes Website Flaw to Steal Expensive Goods
Home Depot Q2 2018 Results Shed Light on U.S. Economy

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Confusion and delays at Orlando airport after TSA agent falls to his death

An off-duty Transportation Security Administration officer fell to his death Saturday from a hotel balcony inside Florida's Orlando International Airport, officials said, sending confused travelers scattering past security checkpoints unscreened and causing flight delays.

There were varying descriptions about what happened. Orlando police said a man in his 40s jumped, in an apparent suicide, from the Hyatt Regency Hotel onto an atrium floor in the main terminal at about 9:30 a.m. ET.

TSA spokeswoman Jenny Burke identified the man as an off-duty TSA officer, and said he fell from one of the multilevel hotel's balconies, which overlooks an area where people line up for one of the airport's security checkpoints.

[...] Trista Eaden told Spectrum News 13, a CNN affiliate, that she was waiting in line for screening when she heard a loud bang. "Then I saw the TSA agents standing up, and all of a sudden they just told us to run, to just go through the screening," Eaden said. The TSA said that several passengers scattered past the security areas without screening. All passengers at gates 70 to 129 had to be rescreened, the airport said.

Also at the Orlando Sentinel.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On Thursday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shared photos of Raptor rocket engines that recently left the company's factory in Hawthorne, Calif., headed out to be tested at its facility near McGregor, Texas. "Preparing to fire the Starship Raptor engine," he said by way of a caption on Twitter.

The photos were interesting, but Musk had additional comments about the engine that revealed much about how the company is proceeding with overall design of the vehicle it will power. SpaceX's approach seems focused on keeping costs down and moving as quickly as possible towards a launch of the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket in the early 2020s.

For example, Musk said, "Initially making one 200 metric ton thrust engine common across ship & booster to reach the Moon as fast as possible. Next versions will split to vacuum-optimized (380+ sec Isp) & sea-level thrust optimized (~250 ton)."

This comment is notable for a couple of reasons. First of all, the company appears to have decided to streamline the Raptor engine to a single design that will power both the rocket at liftoff, and the spaceship in the upper atmosphere and outer space. It will take less time to develop, test, and qualify a single engine. It will also cost less money.

Additionally, Musk notes that the goal is "to reach the Moon as fast as possible." The company still appears to be focused on lunar orbital flights, such as the #dearMoon project for Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa, as the first missions for Starship.

There is an added benefit to this approach: for the next two decades, NASA appears likely to be highly interested in developing infrastructure near and on the Moon. By flying Starship on early test flights to the same destination, SpaceX has a far greater chance to win government contracts for the delivery of cargo, and potentially astronauts, to the Moon. Heretofore, neither NASA nor the US military has shown much if any interest in SpaceX's ambitious rocket and spacecraft.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

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