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Snotnose writes:

Nobel prize winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann has died.

A polymath who discovered and organized the tiniest building blocks of matter and went on to study the most complex systems in the universe, Gell-Mann died Friday at the age of 89.

"Much of what we currently understand about particle physics was invented by Murray Gell-Mann," says Sean Carroll, a theoretical physicist at Caltech, where Gell-Mann taught for decades. "He was a towering influence in the field."

The New York Times has his obituary

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

AMD's 3rd Gen Ryzen Is The Most Exciting Processor Launch In A Decade

There have been a fair amount of rumors surrounding AMD's 3rd Gen Ryzen 'Zen 2′ processors over the last few weeks covering specifications, performance and pricing. I wrote just yesterday about the latest rumor of a supposed 16-core mainstream Ryzen CPU obtaining a huge Cinebench score and a few days ago I discussed why AMD might be considering getting rid of its low-end Threadripper CPUs too. However, leaks and rumors aside, there are far more important and genuine reasons to be excited by 3rd Gen Ryzen and what AMD will be announcing next week at Computex and after that at E3 in June.

[...] AMD could finally match or even beat Intel with Zen 2 and 3rd Gen Ryzen as lots of these issues are rumored to be solved. Memory speeds will apparently increase significantly and given the impact we've seen from relatively small boosts in memory speed, this could well see 3rd Gen Ryzen CPUs offer sizeable performance gains. Thankfully, memory prices are in AMD's favor too with kits of 16GB 3,600MHz memory retailing for less than $125 - when just before Christmas that same kit would have cost you nearly $260.

[...] The latest rumor of a Cinebench score of such a CPU puts this 16-core monster on par with Intel's Core i9-9980XE – a $2,000 CPU that requires Intel's high-end desktop motherboards, yet rumors of the supposed Ryzen 9 3850X put that CPU as retailing for less than $600. While we might not see those lofty 5GHz numbers from that CPU, they might appear lower down the stack with a 12-core model, which is likely to be a favorite for general purpose users and gamers alike.

[...] The fact is, that 1st and 2nd Gen Ryzen didn't deal a death blow to Intel. It was still faster in some areas and while its CPUs and platforms usually cost more, that doesn't always matter, especially if the differences are mere 10′s of dollars and you'll be using your PC for the next few years, reaping the benefits. However, with 3rd Gen Ryzen, all the signs are that we could finally be looking at reviewers like myself recommending AMD's CPUs across the board, and not just for certain workloads.

Could it really be that AMD's offerings will be faster, with more cores, more IPC, lower energy consumption, and cheaper all at once across vast swaths of the CPU market?

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

This seems so wrong on so many counts I am at a loss for [printable] words.

Georgia Supreme Court Rules that State Has No Obligation to Protect Personal Information

Almost exactly one year after the stringent European General Data Protection Regulation came into effect (May 25, 2019), the Supreme Court of the state of Georgia has ruled (May 20,  2019) that the state government does not have an inherent obligation to protect citizens' personal information that it stores.

The ruling relates to a case that dates back to 2013. A Georgia Department of Labor employee inadvertently emailed a spreadsheet containing the names, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and email addresses of 4,457 people who had applied for benefit to about 1,000 people.

Thomas McConnell, whose details appeared on the spreadsheet, filed a putative class action against the Department of Labor, alleging negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and invasion of privacy. That case has progressed through the legal system to the Supreme Court, and has been dismissed (PDF).

While the Supreme Court has not ruled that there can never be an obligation to protect citizens' data, it has ruled that the obligation is not automatic -- and in the McConnell case, there were no separate requirements to provide the obligation.

canopic jug writes:

Mike Masnick at Techdirt lays out, once again, the evidence rebutting Shiva Ayyadurai's claim to have invented e-mail. Shiva Ayyadurai just settled with Techdirt over his repudiated claims. No money was exchanged in the settlement but Techdirt did agree to publish Ayyadurai's claims side by side with the actual facts for comparison. Ayyadurai rose to international attention a few years ago after he claimed the mantle for himself and went around accusing detractors of racism underwritten by large corporations. Now that the issue is officially settled, Mike Masnick has written another summary.

[...] And with that, we'll (hopefully) leave this saga aside. If Ayyadurai would like to respond to this, or to supply evidence to contradict the points and evidence raised above, he is, as always, welcome to provide it. He could have done so any time since 2012 when we first wrote about him and his claims, rather than taking us to court for two and a half years. I still believe that Ayyadurai should, in fact, be praised for what he accomplished as a teenager -- building a working email system as he apparently did, at the time he did, is no small feat. Our only issue with his claims is the decision to argue that his impressive creation was actually "the invention of email." It was not.

It may take a while for Techdirt to get back on its feet both regarding finances and workflow. The trouble from that particular charlatan cost not only a lot of time but also a fair amount of money. Mike Masnick ended up accepting support from the Koch brothers in order to keep going with writing and reporting, allowing the site to keep going but at the cost of tainting its reputation somewhat. With luck the site can become independent again.

Earlier on SN:
Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai's Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt(2017)
The Guy who Claims to have Invented E-Mail is at it Again (2017)
The Guy who Claims he Created EMAIL is at it; Again (2017)
  [...]
Huffington Post Shows the Importance Of Fact Checking (2014)

Original Submission

chromas writes:

CBS News:

When it comes to labels on food, there's no agreed upon wording to let consumers know when to toss packaged grocery items. Public confusion over how long they can keep and safely eat products is part of the reason Americans throw away roughly a third of their food -- about $161 billion worth -- each year.

Compounding the uncertainty for consumers about when to toss food is the array of descriptions producers use to signal a product's shelf life. Those include "use by," "sell by," "freeze by," "best if used before" and "expires on," leaving the public unclear on the safety of products and causing lots of perfectly fine food to get tossed.

[...] Looking to stem the tide of still-edible food that ends of in landfills, the FDA is backing a voluntary industry effort to standardize the "best if used by" wording on packaged food, saying it should curb consumer confusion thought to contribute to about 20% of food wasted in U.S. homes.

[...] Still, the FDA's guidance may not go far in clearing up the public's misunderstanding about labels, observers said. For one, the labeling only applies to food quality, not its safety.

[...] The [Grocery Manufacturers Association] and the Food Marketing Institute in January 2017 recommended making the phrase uniform, along with use of the "use by" phrase to indicate when food should no longer be eaten for safety reasons. In a letter to the food industry, the FDA said it would not address the latter phrase "at this time."

Predicting when food is past its prime is an inexact science, according to Kevin Smith, senior advisor for food safety in the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. He said consumers should regularly examine food in their kitchen cabinets or pantries that have passed their "best if used by" dates, and throw out if they've noticeably changed in color, consistency or texture.

"Food is much safer than it was a few decades ago, largely because of refrigeration and dramatically improved manufacturing processes. But to really address the problem with food waste, the FDA should tell people something more meaningful than open it, look at it, smell it, and if it seems OK, eat away, otherwise, toss," Steinzor added.

The FDA should instead define when foods become risky to eat based on shelf life and require those dates be disclosed, she said.

Original Submission

realDonaldTrump writes:

Microsoft Corp and Sony Corp on Thursday said they struck a strategic partnership in which Sony would use Microsoft's cloud for streaming games and media and the two would work together to develop image sensors.

The deal is in its early stages, with many specifics yet to be determined. But the owners of two major consumer interactive entertainment franchises – Microsoft's Xbox platform and Sony's PlayStation – would collaborate to stream games and content to consumers and offer game makers new development tools.

[...] Sony shares jumped nearly 11 percent as Asian markets opened. Microsoft's stock closed up 2 percent on Thursday.

Sony's deal with Microsoft comes at a time when the Japanese firm's gaming business is losing some steam as its PlayStation 4 (PS4) console nears the end of its life.

Analysts widely expect Sony to launch a next-generation console in 2020 to replace the five-year old PS4, but for this year at least Sony has flagged a drop in profit.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Weeks ago, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) released an outline for the The Protecting Children from Abusive Games Act, aimed at stopping randomized loot boxes and pay-to-win mechanics in the game industry. Today, Hawley was joined by Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) in formally introducing that bill in the Senate, complete with an 18-page draft of its legislative text.

Perhaps the most interesting portion of the bill attempts to define so-called "pay-to-win" mechanics in games. Those are defined broadly here as purchasable content that "assists a user in accomplishing an achievement within the game that can otherwise be accomplished without the purchase of such transaction" or which "permits a user to continue to access content of the game that had previously been accessible to the user but has been made inaccessible after the expiration of a timer or a number of gameplay attempts."

For multiplayer games, this would also include any purchasable in-game content that "from the perspective of a reasonable user, provides a competitive advantage."

As far as loot boxes are concerned, the act targets games where purchasable in-game content is randomized or partially randomized. This includes games where you purchase one item for the chance to purchase unknown or random items in the future, closing one potential loophole before it even starts.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/gop-dem-senators-officially-introduce-loot-box-pay-to-win-legislation/

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

It has been nine days since Microsoft patched the high-severity vulnerability known as BlueKeep, and yet the dire advisories about its potential to sow worldwide disruptions keep coming.

Until recently, there was little independent corroboration that exploits could spread virally from computer to computer in a way not seen since the WannaCry and NotPetya worms shut down computers worldwide in 2017. Some researchers felt Microsoft has been unusually tight-lipped with partners about this vulnerability, possibly out of concern that any details, despite everyone's best efforts, might hasten the spread of working exploit code.

Until recently, researchers had to take Microsoft's word the vulnerability was severe. Then five researchers from security firm McAfee reported last Tuesday that they were able to exploit the vulnerability and gain remote code execution without any end-user interaction. The post affirmed that CVE-2019-0708, as the vulnerability is indexed, is every bit as critical as Microsoft said it was.

"There is a gray area to responsible disclosure," the researchers wrote. "With our investigation we can confirm that the exploit is working and that it is possible to remotely execute code on a vulnerable system without authentication."

Story:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/why-a-windows-flaw-patched-nine-days-ago-is-still-spooking-the-internet/

Further Reading:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/microsoft-warns-wormable-windows-bug-could-lead-to-another-wannacry/

Entry in the "Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures" database: CVE-2019-0708.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Infamous OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma used front organizations and sponsored research to deceive the World Health Organization and corrupt global public health policies with the goal of boosting international opioid sales and profits, according to a Congressional report (PDF) released Thursday, May 22.

The investigation identified two WHO guidance documents that appear to parrot some of Purdue's misleading and outright false marketing claims about the safety and efficacy of their highly addictive opioids.

The findings, released by Reps. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), land as the country is still grappling with an epidemic of opioid abuse and overdoses. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioid overdoses kill an average of 130 Americans every day.

Clark and Rogers say that the motivation for the investigation follows a 2017 warning letter Congress members sent to the WHO. Given the opioid epidemic unfolding in the US, the lawmakers warned the WHO that opioid makers would try to expand into international markets, which could potentially trigger a global epidemic. But the Congress members say they didn't get a response (though the WHO disputes this).

"When the WHO failed to respond to the letter, we began to question why they would remain silent about such a significant and devastating public health epidemic," the report reads. "The answers we found are deeply disturbing."

Based on public records, the report outlines a tangle of organizations and individuals that connect financial threads from Purdue to WHO.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/05/world-health-organization-parroted-purdues-deceptive-opioid-claims-report-says/

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Facebook culls three billion fake profiles

Facebook has published its latest "enforcement report", which details how many posts and accounts it took action on between October 2018 and March 2019.

During that six-month period, Facebook removed more than three billion fake accounts - more than ever before. More than seven million "hate speech" posts were removed, also a record high. For the first time, Facebook also reported how many deleted posts were appealed, and how many were put back online after review.

In a call with reporters on Thursday, chief executive Mark Zuckerberg hit back against numerous calls to break up Facebook, arguing its size made it possible to defend against the network's problems. "I don't think that the remedy of breaking up the company is going to address [the problem]," he said. "The success of the company has allowed us to fund these efforts at a massive level. I think the amount of our budget that goes toward our safety systems... I believe is greater than Twitter's whole revenue this year."

Facebook said the rise in the number of deleted fake accounts was because "bad actors" were using automated methods to create large numbers of them. But it said it spotted and deleted a majority of them within minutes, before they had any opportunity to "cause harm". The social network will now also report how many posts were removed for selling "regulated goods" such as drugs and guns. It said it took action on more than one million posts selling guns in the six-month period covered by the report.

For some types of content, such as child sex abuse imagery, violence and terrorist propaganda, the report estimates how often such content was actually seen by people on Facebook. The report said that out of every 10,000 pieces of content viewed on Facebook:

• about 14 views were of nudity
• 25 views were of violence or graphic content
• fewer than three views were of child abuse imagery or terrorist propaganda

Overall, about 5% of the monthly active users on Facebook were fake accounts.

Original Submission

Fnord666 writes:

Comcast may be harming its reputation by failing to reveal all of its lobbying activities, including its involvement in trade associations and lobbying at the state level, a group of shareholders says in a proposal that asks for more lobbying disclosures.

Comcast's disclosures for its lobbying of state governments "are often cursory or non-existent," and Comcast's failure to disclose its involvement in trade associations means that "investors have neither an accurate picture of the company's total lobbying expenditures nor an understanding of its priorities, interests, or potential risks from memberships," the proposal said. "Comcast's lack of transparency around its lobbying poses risks to its already troubled reputation, which is concerning in a highly regulated industry, especially given the rise of public Internet alternatives."

The proposal is on the ballot for Comcast's June 5 annual shareholder meeting and was filed by Friends Fiduciary, which "invest[s] based on Quaker values" and says it "actively screen[s] companies for social responsibility." Friends Fiduciary and other investors who joined the proposal collectively hold "over 1 million shares of Comcast stock," they said.

The shareholder resolution would be non-binding even if it passed. It asks for an annual report disclosing, among other things, "Payments by Comcast used for (a) direct or indirect lobbying or (b) grassroots lobbying communications" and information on "Comcast's membership in and payments to any tax-exempt organization that writes and endorses model legislation."

[...] Comcast's board unanimously recommended that shareholders vote against the Friends Fiduciary resolution, saying that Comcast "already disclose[s] most of our government lobbying interactions" as required by law. "[O]ur Board believes that the requirements in this proposal are burdensome and an unproductive use of our resources and are not in the best interests of our shareholders," Comcast said in a rebuttal included in its proxy statement [PDF].

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/comcast-does-so-much-lobbying-that-it-says-disclosing-it-all-is-too-hard/

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Until recently Americans seemed willing to let police deploy new technologies in the name of public safety as they saw fit. But crime is much rarer than it was in the 1990s, and technological scepticism is growing. On May 14th San Francisco became the first American city to ban its agencies from using facial-recognition systems. That decision was profoundly unpopular at the police conference. Jack Marks, who manages Panasonic’s public-safety products, called it “short-sighted and reactive”. The technology exists, he said; “the best thing you can do is help shape it.” Other cities, including Somerville in Massachusetts, may soon follow San Francisco’s lead all the same.

Companies are under scrutiny, too. On May 22nd Amazon saw off two challenges by activist shareholders. They wanted the board to commission an independent study to determine whether Rekognition, its facial-recognition platform, imperils civil, human and privacy rights. The activists also wanted to ban the firm from selling Rekognition to governments until the company’s board concludes, “after an evaluation using independent evidence”, that it does not erode those rights.

Senior police officers argue that the technology is a useful crime-fighting tool. Daniel Steeves, chief information officer for the Ottawa Police Service, says that a robbery-investigation unit spent six months testing a facial-recognition system. It lowered the average time required for an officer to identify a subject from an image from 30 days to three minutes. The officers could simply run an image through a database of 50,000 mugshot photos rather than leafing through them manually or sending a picture to the entire department and asking if anybody recognised the suspect. Other officers stress that a facial-recognition match never establishes guilt. It is just a lead to be investigated.

Yet officers sense that the technology is in bad odour. A deputy police chief from an American suburb with a security system that uses facial recognition around the local high school says: “We knew that facial recognition wasn’t going to fly, so we called it an Early Warning Detection System.”

Fnord666 writes:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/05/fake-cryptocurrency-apps-on-google-play-try-to-profit-on-bitcoin-price-surge/

Google's official Play Store has been caught hosting malicious apps that targeted Android users with an interest in cryptocurrencies, researchers reported on Thursday.

In all, researchers with security provider ESET recently discovered two fraudulent digital wallets. The first, called Coin Wallet, let users create wallets for a host of different cryptocurrencies. While Coin Wallet purported to generate a unique wallet address for users to deposit coins, the app in fact used a developer-owned wallet for each supported currency, with a total of 13 wallets. Each Coin Wallet user was assigned the same wallet address for a specific currency.

A second fraudulent Android wallet used the name "Trezor Mobile Wallet" in an attempt to impersonate the widely used hardware cryptocurrency wallet Trezor. The app then instructed users to enter login data and sent it to a server controlled by the developers. Multiple security layers built into real Trezor wallets prevented any credentials entered from accessing legitimate accounts. Still, any email addresses or other personal data could potentially be used in phishing attacks.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Israeli firm linked to WhatsApp spyware attack faces lawsuit

The Israeli firm linked to this week's WhatsApp hack is facing a lawsuit backed by Amnesty International, which says it fears its staff may be under surveillance from spyware installed via the messaging service.

The human rights group's concerns are detailed in a lawsuit filed in Israel by about 50 members and supporters of Amnesty International Israel and others from the human rights community. It has called on the country's ministry of defence to ban the export of NSO's Pegasus software, which can covertly take control of a mobile phone, copy its data and turn on the microphone for surveillance.

An affidavit from Amnesty is at the heart of the case, and concludes that "staff of Amnesty International have an ongoing and well-founded fear they may continue to be targeted and ultimately surveilled" after a hacking attempt last year.

NSO Group, founded in 2010, supplies industry-leading surveillance software to governments that it says is for tackling terrorism and serious crime, and has been licensed to dozens of countries including Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Bahrain and the UAE.

But there have been a string of complaints in the past few months, documented largely by the Toronto-based Citizen Lab, that the technology has been used to target human rights groups, activists and journalists by several countries – and that there has been no attempt to rein it in.

See also: After WhatsApp hack, NSO faces scrutiny from Facebook and UK public pension fund
WhatsApp's security breach: Made in Israel, implemented worldwide
WhatsApp Rushes to Fix Security Flaw Exposed in Hacking of Lawyer's Phone

Previously: A WhatsApp Call Can Hack a Phone: Zero-Day Exploit Infects Mobiles with Spyware

Related: Israeli Spy Tech Company Allegedly Cracks WhatsApp Encryption (2016)
Former NSO Employee Arrested After Attempting to Sell Spyware for $50 Million
Agents Target Researchers who Reported Software that Spied on Jamal Khashoggi before his Death

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Why is Facebook doing robotics research? Hint: It's not about the robots

It's a bit strange to hear that the world's leading social network is pursuing research in robotics rather than, say, making search useful, but Facebook is a big organization with many competing priorities. And while these robots aren't directly going to affect your Facebook experience, what the company learns from them could be impactful in surprising ways.

Though robotics is a new area of research for Facebook, its reliance on and bleeding-edge work in AI are well known. Mechanisms that could be called AI (the definition is quite hazy) govern all sorts of things, from camera effects to automated moderation of restricted content.

[...] As Facebook continually works on expanding its influence from its walled garden of apps and services into the rich but unstructured world of your living room, kitchen and office, its AI agents require more and more sophistication. Sure, you won't see a "Facebook robot" any time soon... unless you count the one they already sell, or the one in your pocket right now.

Also at Futurism.

Original Submission