SoylentNews

RandomFactor writes:

Thousands rallied in Moscow to protest a bill in parliament that would route all internet traffic through servers in Russia.

Protestors fear this bill would

lead to widespread internet censorship for Russian users.

[...and make] virtual private networks (VPNs) ineffective

It is always easier to manage a powergrab of this sort if you can blame RussiaAmerica so the official line is:

the bill is intended to address concerns that Russia could be cut off if the United States applies a new cybersecurity doctrine in an offensive maneuver

conversely

Critics say the bill would create an internet firewall similar to China's.

It also makes a remarkably convenient surveillance choke point, which saves on costs.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Aaron Slepkov, a Trent University physics professor, has published a paper describing why grapes spark when heated in a microwave.

The team found that a microwave -- with a wavelength of 12 centimetres in air -- is the exact same size of a grape in water due to what's known as water's high index of refraction, Slepkov explained. That's when something interesting happens, he said.

Microwaves accumulate and become trapped inside the grape, he said, and those light microwaves pack themselves in the centre and the grape begins to heat up. When a second grape comes in, or the other half of a cut grape, the microwaves concentrate at the sides near each other creating an intense electrical field.

The electric field becomes so high, he said, that it begins stripping electrons off sodium and potassium molecules, creating ions.

"Once you have an ion of sodium or potassium, then all hell breaks loose and the rest of microwave oven is feeding that spark, ionizing the air and turning it into ball lightning," he said.

Professor Slepkov pointed out that there are potential applications in antena design for cellphones or wireless routers:

"We're hypothesizing maybe you can change antenna design because the grapes are acting as a concentrator for wireless radiation or cellphone radiation -- effecting how we design antennas to help act as a signal booster," he said.

I suppose such a product could be considered a grape concentrator.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for chromas

Google Play will let developers earn more money by having users watch ads in exchange for rewards

[In free-to-play games] you'll often be offered the ability to watch a video advertisement to receive some sort of bonus. This bonus can come in the form of double the in-game currency for X number of minutes, an extra chance at a particular level, or anything else that can benefit the user. Developers could add this feature with Unity Ads, but now Google has announced they are building it into the Google Play Billing Library or AIDL interface with only a few additional API calls. The featured is called a "rewarded product" and instructions on how to set it up can be found here.

This means the developer doesn't have to integrate any other SDK into their application or game which should reduce the work required to add this extra monetization opportunity. The feature is powered by Google's Admob technology so developers will have access to the large number of advertisers who they are working with.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The U.S. is seeking bids to improve its "basic" killbot to the the point where it can "acquire, identify, and engage targets at least 3X faster than the current manual process."

U.S. Army Assures Public That Robot Tank System Adheres to AI Murder Policy

Why does any of this matter? The Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, requires that humans be able to "exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force," meaning that the U.S. won't toss a fully autonomous robot into a battlefield and allow it to decide independently whether to kill someone. This safeguard is sometimes called being "in the loop," meaning that a human is making the final decision about whether to kill someone.

Industry Day for the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS) Program. Also at Boing Boing.

Surely these will never be hacked!

Will an operator feel more trepidatious about taking life, due to not being in direct peril themselves? Or less because of greater desensitization? Anyone have any insightful links about drone operator psych outcomes? (Ed: Don't worry about it.)

Related information to inform the philosophical background of why having a human in the loop is required (they don't specify this but e.g. without the human, land mine agreements might start to apply): https://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/media/capdev/capdev_02.pdf

HEY EDITORS! I suggest a new topic: "tech and society" for stuff like this. (Ed: It's Digital Liberty.)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Nvidia to acquire Mellanox Technologies for about $7 billion in cash

Chipmaker Nvidia on Monday announced plans to acquire peer Mellanox Technologies for about $7 billion in cash.

The deal is Nvidia's biggest-ever acquisition and is expected to boost its business of making chips for data centers, allowing it to reduce its reliance on the video game industry, for which it is best known as a major technology vendor.

Financial news website Calcalist had reported earlier on Sunday that Nvidia had outbid Intel for Mellanox.

Mellanox Technologies.

Older articles at Reuters and The Register.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

The US Air Force’s jet-powered robotic wingman is like something out of a video game

The US Air Force has successfully tested an advanced, jet-powered drone called the XQ58-A Valkyrie, that could someday accompany human-piloted fighter jets on missions. The concept is a bit like something we’ve seen in video games, a drone (or swarm of drones) can fight alongside a human pilot, or absorb enemy fire in their place.

The vehicle was developed as a partnership between the Air Force Research Laboratory and Kratos Unmanned Aerial Systems as a relatively cheap platform that can fill a electronic warfare, strike, and surveillance role on the battlefield, controlled by a piloted aircraft on its own or as part of a swarm group. It can carry a small payload of bombs, and can use a conventional runway or can be launched via rocket.

The prototype completed its first test flight (of five planned missions) on March 5th over the Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona, and the Air Force says that it “behaved as expected” over the course of its 76-minute flight. The battery of test flights that it will go through will look at how well the drone’s systems worked, and how well it takes off, flies and lands.

What’s interesting about this particular plan is that it’s an early demonstration of a concept called “loyal wingman.” While this test saw the drone fly on its own — not alongside the fighter aircraft that it’s designed to accompany in the future — the idea is that it could fly alongside a piloted vehicle, which would control it. From there, it could do everything from provide a bit of extra force projection in the air, fly ahead to scout out terrain, or even taking enemy fire in place of its human-piloted companion.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Flickr Will Save All Creative Commons Photos, Deceased Members' Accounts

Flickr will begin deleting photos of accounts over the 1,000 file limit starting on March 12th, but the photo-sharing service has just announced two changes to its policy: spared from deletion will be all Creative Commons photos and the accounts of deceased members.

When Flickr announced its Free account changes back in late 2018, it stated that freely licensed public photos (e.g. Creative Commons, public domain, U.S. government works) uploaded on or before November 1st, 2018, would be spared from the mass deletion.

But Flickr is now going a step further by promising that future Creative Commons photos will be protected as well.

"Creative Commons licenses have been an important part of Flickr since we introduced them on our platform in 2004," Flickr says. "We wanted to make sure we didn't disrupt the hundreds of millions of stories across the global internet that link to freely licensed Flickr images. We know the cost of storing and serving these images is vastly outweighed by the value they represent to the world. In this spirit, today we're going further and now protecting all public, freely licensed images on Flickr, regardless of the date they were uploaded. We want to make sure we preserve these works and further the value of the licenses for our community and for anyone who might benefit from them."

Previously: Flickr to Stop Giving Terabyte of Photo Storage to Free Users

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Here in the U.S., the presidential election season, like Christmas, seems to start earlier and earlier each time.

In keeping with this, the Democratic National Committee is making waves by announcing that it will exclude Fox News, which has the largest viewership of the major cable news networks by a considerable margin, from debate coverage of DNC presidential candidates.

Thomas Lifson outlines a number of reasons this may not be a good move.

One is that from a historical and strategy perspective:

Presidential debates inevitably favor the challengers. Trump can push them in that direction by agreeing to debates only if Fox News is included. That forces them to either accept FNC or have no debates at all. If they accept, that makes FNC the debate worth watching. The rest are discredited as Democrat "safe spaces,"

And it appears he has pounced and done exactly that from his twitter account:

Democrats just blocked @FoxNews from holding a debate. Good, then I think I’ll do the same thing with the Fake News Networks and the Radical Left Democrats in the General Election debates!

Really all either party has to do is A) not be crazy and/or B) keep their idiot mouths shut to win.

Neither of these seems to be in the cards dealt to either side, so it should be a heck of a ride.

Original Submission

Bot writes:

All 157 passengers of an Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 died today, an accident that looks similar to the Indonesian Lion Air crash which caused 189 victims in October 2018.

The Ethiopian Boeing 737, a brand new plane, lost contact six minutes after departure from Bole International Airport; the 737 departing from Jakarta had done the same twelve minutes after taking off.

In both cases the weather was optimal and the pilots were experts. Ethiopian Airlines has a good safety record.

Both planes belong to the MAX variant, which features a "Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System" software to increase safety. Depending on sensor input, such software lowers the nose of the airplane, to prevent stalling. Investigations into the first disaster suggest the pilot might have had trouble with the automatic systems over this issue.

The two black boxes (with cockpit voice and flight data respectively), are likely to be recovered.

Sources:
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ethiopian-airlines-crash-news-latest-death-toll-addis-ababa-nairobi-boeing-737-max-a8816296.html
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/03/10/second-crash-of-new-boeing-737-max-8-aggravates-safety-concerns/

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Is it possible to make use of the little death? Can you learn while asleep? It turns out that, just maybe there's something possible after all.

Recent research indicates that if you don't sleep well it may contribute to Alzheimer's, and most are aware you won't form memories or learn as well. If you don't sleep at all it can even mean lights out for good (humans are more resilient to lack of sleep than many animals, but it will still get you.)

It has long been one of man's aspirations to make use of that lost 1/3 of our life in some useful fashion. Early flawed studies even seemed to show it was possible (flawed in that what learning occurred was actually due to the stimulus waking the sleeper) and products were produced with this in mind, such as the 1930's era psycho-phone, an Edison style phonograph on a timer that played inspirational messages while you slept.

in recent years, studies have found that the brain may not be a total blob during sleep. These findings suggest that it is possible for the sleeping brain to absorb information and even form new memories. The catch, however, is that the memories are implicit, or unconscious. Put another way, this form of learning is extremely basic, much simpler than what your brain has to accomplish if you want to learn German or quantum mechanics.

For example, simple associations can be made to break habits. The example is given of associating the smell of rotten fish with cigarettes:

RandomFactor writes:

According to information security firm Resecurity, hackers in the Iranian backed IRIDIUM hacking group made off with at least 6TB worth of internal Citrix[*] data.

The breach occurred in December, and stolen data included:

lifting emails, blueprints, and other documents, after bypassing multi-factor login systems and slipping into Citrix's VPNs.

This hacking group has been extremely active and

IRIDIUM "has hit more than 200 government agencies, oil and gas companies, and technology companies including Citrix."

According to a statement by Citrix's CISO (Chief Information Security Officer) Stan Black:

"While our investigation is ongoing, based on what we know to date, it appears that the hackers may have accessed and downloaded business documents," Black said. "The specific documents that may have been accessed, however, are currently unknown."

At this point, Citrix reckons the intrusion was limited to its corporate network, and thus believes customer records and data were not stolen nor touched.

How did they get in - Password Spraying.

While not confirmed, the FBI has advised that the hackers likely used a tactic known as password spraying, a technique that exploits weak passwords. Once they gained a foothold with limited access, they worked to circumvent additional layers of security.

RandomFactor writes:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration gave the green light Friday to genetically modified salmon that grow about twice as fast as normal.

The FDA lifted an alert which

Prevented AquaBounty from importing its salmon eggs to its Indiana facility, where they would be grown before being sold as food. The agency noted the salmon has already undergone safety reviews, and that it lifted its alert because the fish would be subject to a new regulation that will require companies to disclose when a food is bioengineered.

Compliance with the disclosure regulations will start showing up in 2020 and becomes mandatory in 2022.

As one might expect, the FDA is under suit by various groups opposed to the sale of the fish.

Called AquAdvantage, the fish is Atlantic salmon modified with DNA from other fish species to grow faster, which the company says will help feed growing demand for animal protein while reducing costs.

The fish are bred female and sterile in containment tanks to help allay fears about them entering the environment.

Previous Coverage here

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

If you have a cat, you are furmiliar with the habit your furiend has of wiggling their hind end right before cathletically pouncing, catching, and shredding whatever unfurtunate part of your body foolishly moved under the blankets. This leads to an idle curiosity - why do cats adjust their rear before pouncing?

John Hutchinson, a professor of evolutionary biomechanics at the Royal Veterinary College in London has several pawsible theories that may tell the tail:

may help press the hindlimbs into the ground to give cats added friction (traction) for pushing them forward in the pounce

It may also have a sensory role to prepare the vision, proprioception [an awareness of one's position and movement] and muscle — and whole cat — for the rapid neural commands needed for the pounce

It probably does stretch the muscles a bit and that might help with pouncing

This isn't behavior unique to house-cats. Wild felines all the way up to lions and tigers litterally do this fur real in the wild.

On the subject of purforming a proper acatdemic study to determine an answer to this biting question, Hutchinson isn't kitten around

"it must be done, somehow. I shall marshal some scientists, and some friendly cats, in due course."

Stay tuned, if the study is done purfectly we may eventually be able to scratch off another timeless question. Which would be pawsome.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Professor Eugene Spafford at Purdue University, the father of the field of Internet security, has some takes on this year's RSA conference:

I have now attended 13 of the last 18 RSA Conferences (see some of my comments for 2016, 2015, and 2014). Before there were RSA conferences, there were the Joint National Computer Security Conferences, and I went to those, too. I’ve been going to these conferences for about 30 years now.

[...] I am giving serious thought to this being my last RSA Conference — the expense is getting to be too great for value received. The years have accumulated and I find myself increasingly out of step here. I want to do what is right — safe, secure, ensuring privacy — but so much of this industry is built around the idea that “right” means creating a startup and retiring rich in 5 years after an M&A event. I don’t believe that having piles of money is how to measure what is right. I will never retire rich; actually, because I will never be rich, I probably can’t afford to retire! I am also saddened by the lack of even basic awareness of what so many people worked so hard to accomplish as foundations for others to build on. We have a rich history as a field, and a great deal of knowledge. It is sad to see that so much of it is forgotten and ignored.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Is This the End of Recycling?

For decades, we were sending the bulk of our recycling to China—tons and tons of it, sent over on ships to be made into goods such as shoes and bags and new plastic products. But last year, the country restricted imports of certain recyclables, including mixed paper—magazines, office paper, junk mail—and most plastics. Waste-management companies across the country are telling towns, cities, and counties that there is no longer a market for their recycling. These municipalities have two choices: pay much higher rates to get rid of recycling, or throw it all away.

Most are choosing the latter. "We are doing our best to be environmentally responsible, but we can't afford it," said Judie Milner, the city manager of Franklin, New Hampshire. Since 2010, Franklin has offered curbside recycling and encouraged residents to put paper, metal, and plastic in their green bins. When the program launched, Franklin could break even on recycling by selling it for $6 a ton. Now, Milner told me, the transfer station is charging the town $125 a ton to recycle, or $68 a ton to incinerate. One-fifth of Franklin's residents live below the poverty line, and the city government didn't want to ask them to pay more to recycle, so all those carefully sorted bottles and cans are being burned. Milner hates knowing that Franklin is releasing toxins into the environment, but there's not much she can do. "Plastic is just not one of the things we have a market for," she said.

The same thing is happening across the country. Broadway, Virginia, had a recycling program for 22 years, but recently suspended it after Waste Management told the town that prices would increase by 63 percent, and then stopped offering recycling pickup as a service. "It almost feels illegal, to throw plastic bottles away," the town manager, Kyle O'Brien, told me.

Without a market for mixed paper, bales of the stuff started to pile up in Blaine County, Idaho; the county eventually stopped collecting it and took the 35 bales it had hoped to recycle to a landfill. The town of Fort Edward, New York, suspended its recycling program in July and admitted it had actually been taking recycling to an incinerator for months. Determined to hold out until the market turns around, the nonprofit Keep Northern Illinois Beautiful has collected 400,000 tons of plastic. But for now, it is piling the bales behind the facility where it collects plastic.

Original Submission