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SomeGuy writes:

The Verge is reporting: drivers for the smart-phone app dependent Uber and Lyft ride-hailing services will be staging a strike on Wednesday to protest low wages and lack of additional benefits. The strike is meant to coincide with Uber's forthcoming IPO.

Both Uber and Lyft are generally considered "technology platforms", that simply match impromptu individual drivers to passengers, rather than an employer. Drivers are currently considered "independent contractors" and not employees. As such, drivers do not have the same benefits as employees, and in some areas allows these companies to skirt regulations.

Given the distributed ad-hock nature of how drivers are acquired, it will be interesting to what effect, if any, this "strike" has.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Fnord666

Law enforcement officers tend to frown on citizens interfering with their revenue generation. This has led to a number of First Amendment lawsuits from people arrested for warning others about [check notes] the existence of police officers in the vicinity.

One citizen was told as much when he was arrested for holding up a sign reading "Cops Ahead." One cop kept on script, referring to the man's actions as "interfering with an investigation." It wasn't an investigation. It was a distracted driving sting. The cop actually hauling him to the station was more to the point, telling the man he was arresting him for "interfering with our livelihood." First Amendment violation or felony interference with a business model? Why not both?

A lawsuit was filed in 2018 seeking a declaration that honking a car's horn is protected expression. And, all the way back in 2011, a class action lawsuit was filed over citations and arrests for flashing headlights to warn drivers of unseen officers.

A federal judge has decided -- albeit not very firmly -- that at least one of these actions is protected by the First Amendment. Wisconsin Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker says flashing your headlights to warn drivers of speed traps is expressive speech -- something cops would be better off not trying to punish. (via Volokh Conspiracy)

Source: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190502/05382642129/federal-judge-says-flashing-headlights-to-warn-drivers-hidden-cops-might-be-protected-speech.shtml

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takyon writes:

Cray and AMD will build an exascale supercomputer for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory:

AMD today announced that it will partner with Cray to build Frontier, a supercomputer capable of "exascale" performance — one that can complete at least a quintillion floating point computations ("flops") per second, where a flop equals two 15-digit numbers multiplied together — for weather system simulation, subatomic particle modeling, and more. The two companies expect it will be the world's fastest supercomputer when it's delivered in 2021, with more than 1.5 exaflops of theoretical performance — roughly 50 times the speed of today's top supercomputers and faster than the top 160 combined. Frontier will be built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

[...] Driving Frontier's breakthrough compute is what AMD claims is the first "fully optimized" GPU and CPU design for supercomputing. It features a custom AMD Epyc processor packing a future Zen core architecture designed for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI workloads, along with a graphics processing unit (GPU) in AMD's Radeon Instinct product lineup of server accelerators. The GPUs feature HPC engines, "extensive" mixed precision operations, and high-bandwidth memory, and they're linked together — one Epyc processor to four Instinct graphics cards — by AMD's Infinity Fabric and Cray Slingshot high-bandwidth system interconnect architectures.

Also at AnandTech and The Verge.

See also: AMD's Supercomputer Deal Is a 'Landmark Win' for Chip Maker, Analyst Says

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

A "caravan" of Americans living with Type 1 diabetes made its way across the U.S. border into Canada over the weekend in search of affordable medical care in a country where they can get the "exact same" life-saving drugs for a dramatically lower price.

"We're on a #CaravanToCanada because the USA charges astronomical prices for insulin that most people can't afford," tweeted caravan member Quinn Nystrom as she shared updates on the journey.

Nystrom was among a group of Minnesotans who piled into cars on Friday to make the 600-mile journey from the Twin Cities to Fort Frances, Ontario, where she said insulin, the hormone patients with Type 1 Diabetes rely on to regulate their blood glucose levels, can be bought for a tenth of what it costs in the U.S.

The caravan was organized as part of a campaign launched under the banner "#insulinforall" to call on the U.S. government to regulate the cost of life-saving drugs, including insulin, and make medication affordable for anyone who needs it.

[...]

President Donald Trump's administration has vowed to address calls for greater drug pricing regulation. But, Democrats, including Cummings, have criticized the U.S. leader for being all talk and no action on that promise.

"Tweets are not enough," Cummings said in a statement, after Trump lamented high drug costs on Twitter. "We need real action and meaningful reform," Cummings said.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/caravan-americans-crossing-canadian-border-get-affordable-medical-care-1417582

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realDonaldTrump writes:

According to U.K. consumer group Which?, in tests of nine iPhone models, all of them fell short of Apple's battery life claims by between 18 and 51 percent.

The group carried out tests to determine average talk time for a range of models, including the iPhone XR, which had the biggest overestimation for talk time on a full charge. In Which? tests, it lasted for 16 hours and 32 minutes — whereas Apple said it would last 25 hours.

"With mobile phones now an essential part of everyday life, we should be able to count on our handsets living up to the manufacturer's claims," said Natalie Hitchins, Which? head of home products and services, in a statement.

"There are clearly questions here around how long some mobile phone batteries will last and so it's important to make sure you find an independent source of reliable information when buying your next phone," Hitchins added.

[...] Apple disputed the results in a statement to Business Insider.

"We rigorously test our products and stand behind our battery life claims. With tight integration between hardware and software, iPhone is engineered to intelligently manage power usage to maximize battery life. Our testing methodology reflects that intelligence. Which? haven't shared their methodology with us so we can't compare their results to ours. We share our methodology for testing which we publish in detail here."

Fox News, TechSpot, TechRadar

Original Submission

DrkShadow writes:

Chronic fatigue syndrome affects some, is ignored in those who have anything-at-all wrong, might be accepted with a shrug and a pat on the back for the otherwise healthy, and is otherwise unknown. Until now, no one has had anything to go on — but now, there's a way to show that seemingly healthy people are, in fact, affected by something. Well, it's a start.

Using a test to judge the stress of the immune system, researchers at Stanford have now identified those symptomatically diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome as having a condition that is not identified in a control group. While this is very little to go on, it is more than nothing to go on, and so could start a search for a treatment for an otherwise clueless grab at nothing. The simple fact that there is now a distinction is itself news, but also that the research uses a lab-on-a-chip to assess change in current of a sample of immune cells, giving them an indicator of the health (or stress) of the sample is an example of a technology that hasn't been considered until the last few years — and a hint at advances offered by even simple, routine advances of technology.

As a shameless plug, I consulted a trusted holistic health friend (note: whole-health/holistic, not homeopathic/pretend) about CFS, and she mentioned that she feels it's a general toxicity problem. The immune system does play a role in clearing various toxins from the body, so perhaps another clue for researchers to pursue. (Tip: up until 1990, lead-based solder was used in household plumbing. How much that matters, perhaps not a whole lot.)

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aristarchus writes:

Has no one seen this yet? Don't cross the streams!

Ars Technica:

Earlier today, we wrote that Microsoft was going to add some big new features to the Windows Subsystem for Linux, including native support for Docker containers. It turns out that that ain't the half of it.

Not even half.

All is changing with Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. Instead of emulating the Linux kernel APIs on the NT kernel, WSL 2 is going to run a full Linux kernel in a lightweight virtual machine. This kernel will be trimmed down and tailored to this particular use case, with stripped-down hardware support (since it will defer to the host Windows OS for that) and faster booting.

The Linux kernel is GPLed open source; the GPL license requires that any modifications made to the code must be published and made available under the GPL license. Microsoft will duly comply with this, publishing the patches and modifications it makes to the kernel. WSL 2 will also use a similar split as the current WSL does: the kernel component will be shipped with Windows while "personalities" as provided by the various Linux distributions can be installed from the Microsoft Store.

To quote Han Solo, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for ErnestTBass

From checking in at a polling place on a tablet to registering to vote by smartphone to using an electronic voting machine to cast a ballot, computers have become an increasingly common part of voting in America.

But the underlying technology behind some of those processes is often a black box. Private companies, not state or local governments, develop and maintain most of the software and hardware that keep democracy chugging along. That has kept journalists, academics and even lawmakers from speaking with certainty about election security.

In an effort to improve confidence in elections, Microsoft announced Monday that it is releasing an open-source software development kit called ElectionGuard that will use encryption techniques to let voters know when their vote is counted. It will also allow election officials and third parties to verify election results to make sure there was no interference with the results.

"It's very much like the cybersecurity version of a tamper-proof bottle," said Tom Burt, Microsoft's vice president of customer security and trust, in an interview with NPR. "Tamper-proof bottles don't prevent any hack of the contents of the bottle, but it makes it makes it harder, and it definitely reveals when the tampering has occurred."

Developed with the computer science company Galois, the kit will be available free of charge for election technology vendors to incorporate into their voting systems.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/06/720071488/ahead-of-2020-microsoft-unveils-tool-to-allow-voters-to-track-their-ballots

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inertnet writes:

Amsterdam's head of transport has announced plans to ban petrol and diesel cars in the city by 2030.

The clean air action plan aims to make the Dutch capital a "world leader in emission-free transport".

Transport chief Sharon Dijksma said residents "live a year less on average due to dirty air" and that the plan should "prolong the health of the average Amsterdammer by three months."

But the plan has already incited strong reactions in the Netherlands with one motoring organisation branding it "bizarre" and wondering how normal people would afford electric cars.

The plan, which would be applied 20 years before the Paris Agreement aims to slash greenhouse gas emissions, would require up to 23,000 electric charging points by 2025. The city currently has 3,000.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

A US-based hosting company, Profreehost, has suspended a developer's account over what pretty much boils down to the use of the word "torrent" in the name of one of the packages uploaded to the service.

The developer, identified as "Maurerr" by TorrentFreak – who are reporting about the case -found out that his account had been suspended for "prohibited activity" shortly after uploading a package with the LibTorrent library to his repository containing open-source Linux software.

Neither BitTorrent itself as the protocol, nor the library in question – a building block used in a number of torrent clients – are in any way illegal, even if they are widely used for peer-to-peer sharing of pirated material. Yet despite this association, it's a curious move, to say the least, to effectively ban anything with the word "torrent" from a hosting platform.

"Torrents and torrent related content is strictly prohibited on our service," TorrentFreak said it learned from Profreehost.

Source: https://reclaimthenet.org/profreehost-ban/

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chromas writes:

Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: Facebook Still Can't Figure Out How To Deal With Naked Breasts:

[...] Going back over a decade, the quintessential example used to show the impossibility of coming up with clear, reasonable rules for content moderation at scale is Facebook and breasts. In the early days, as Facebook realized it needed to do some content moderation, and had to establish a clear set of rules that could be applied consistently by a larger team, it started with a simple "no nudity" policy -- and then after that raised questions, it was narrowed down to define female nipples as forbidden.

[...] This might have seemed like a straightforward rule... until mothers posting breastfeeding photos started complaining -- as they did after a bunch of their photos got blocked. Stories about this go back at least until 2008 when the Guardian reported on the issue, after a bunch of mothers started protesting the company, leading Facebook to come up with this incredibly awkward statement defending the practice:

"Photos containing a fully exposed breast, as defined by showing the nipple or areola, do violate those terms (on obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit material) and may be removed," he said in a statement. "The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain."

More public pressure, and more public protests, resulted in Facebook adjusting its policy to allow breastfeeding, but photos still kept getting taken down, leading the company to have to keep changing and clarifying its policy, such as in this statement from 2012.

[...] In 2014, Facebook clarified its policies on nipples again:

chromas writes:

Banana disease boosted by climate change

Black Sigatoka disease emerged from Asia in the late 20th Century and has recently completed its invasion of banana-growing areas in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The new study, by the University of Exeter, says changes to moisture and temperature conditions have increased the risk of Black Sigatoka by more than 44% in these areas since the 1960s.

International trade and increased banana production have also aided the spread of Black Sigatoka, which can reduce the fruit produced by infected plants by up to 80%.

"Black Sigatoka is caused by a fungus (Pseudocercospora fijiensis) whose lifecycle is strongly determined by weather and microclimate," said Dr. Daniel Bebber, of the University of Exeter.

"This research shows that climate change has made temperatures better for spore germination and growth, and made crop canopies wetter, raising the risk of Black Sigatoka infection in many banana-growing areas of Latin America.

"Despite the overall rise in the risk of Black Sigatoka in the areas we examined, drier conditions in some parts of Mexico and Central America have reduced infection risk."

[...] The Pseudocercospora fijiensis fungus spreads via aerial spores, infecting banana leaves and causing streaked lesions and cell death when fungal toxins are exposed to light.

[...] The paper, published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, is entitled: "Climate change effects on black sigatoka disease of banana." (DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2018.0269) [invalid doi?]

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

It is one of the great dilemmas of climate change: We take such comfort from air conditioning that worldwide energy consumption for that purpose has already tripled since 1990. It is on track to grow even faster through mid-century—and assuming fossil-fuel–fired power plants provide the electricity, that could cause enough carbon dioxide emissions to warm the planet by another deadly half-degree Celsius.

A paper published Tuesday in the Nature Communications proposes a partial remedy: Heating, ventilation and air conditioning (or HVAC) systems move a lot of air. They can replace the entire air volume in an office building five or 10 times an hour. Machines that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—a developing fix for climate change—also depend on moving large volumes of air. So why not save energy by tacking the carbon capture machine onto the air conditioner?

This futuristic proposal, from a team led by chemical engineer Roland Dittmeyer at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, goes even further. The researchers imagine a system of modular components, powered by renewable energy, that would not just extract carbon dioxide and water from the air. It would also convert them into hydrogen, and then use a multistep chemical process to transform that hydrogen into liquid hydrocarbon fuels. The result: "Personalized, localized and distributed, synthetic oil wells" in buildings or neighborhoods, the authors write. "The envisioned model of 'crowd oil' from solar refineries, akin to 'crowd electricity' from solar panels," would enable people "to take control and collectively manage global warming and climate change, rather than depending on the fossil power industrial behemoths."

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-air-conditioning-fix-climate-change/

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martyb writes:

Now You Can Officially dox Scrabble Players, Thanks to the New Dictionary Definitions:

But for some, new additions to game are distinctly not OK

It's official: you can now "dox" Scrabble players.

The venerable word game has an official dictionary to save the endless squabbles about what is and isn't allowed and this week it added no less than 2,862 new words to the existing 276,000. That should enable a fair few family arguments.

And, yep, "dox" – defined as "to publish personal information about (a person) on the internet" – is in there. So too is "hackerazzo" – which this author must confess is a new one on him – but the meaning is pretty obvious. It's an unholy conflation of "hacker" and "paparazzo" (the singular version for pedants out there) and is defined as "a person who hacks into the computer or phone of a celebrity in order to gain information about him or her."

Amazingly, though, that isn't the word that everyone is getting upset about. Nope, that honor rests with one of the most commonly used words in English, the humble "OK."

The cheeky folk at Collins Official SCRABBLE™ Words dictionary thought they could sneak in "OK" by packing it in with "bae", "ew", "ume" and "ze" but those two and three-letter words are catnip to Scrabble players. You need to get rid of some pesky letter to slam down an "aquafaba" and walk away with the game? Then you need to know every two and three-letter word that Scrabble can handle.

[...] But "OK"? Well that's controversy right there. The word "okay" has been fine for a long time but "OK" – well, isn't that an abbreviation of "okay"? And if you just thought yes, well then it MUST BE BANNED because abbreviations are a big no-no in Scrabble.

The upshot is that it is now "OK" to use "ok" to mean "okay".

And, yes, it is also still okay to use OK to refer to Oklahoma.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

Today, we're announcing that the next release after .NET Core 3.0 will be .NET 5. This will be the next big release in the .NET family.

There will be just one .NET going forward, and you will be able to use it to target Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, tvOS, watchOS and WebAssembly and more.

We will introduce new .NET APIs, runtime capabilities and language features as part of .NET 5.

[...] We intend to release .NET 5 in November 2020, with the first preview available in the first half of 2020. It will be supported with future updates to Visual Studio 2019, Visual Studio for Mac and Visual Studio Code

Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/dotnet/introducing-net-5/

Original Submission