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An Anonymous Coward writes:

On our current trajectory, the report warns, "planetary and human systems [are] reaching a 'point of no return' by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order."

The only way to avoid the risks of this scenario is what the report describes as "akin in scale to the World War II emergency mobilization"—but this time focused on rapidly building out a zero-emissions industrial system to set in train the restoration of a safe climate.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/597kpd/new-report-suggests-high-likelihood-of-human-civilization-coming-to-an-end-in-2050

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Opinion | We Read 150 Privacy Policies. They Were an Incomprehensible Disaster.

[...] here are several privacy policies from major tech and media platforms. Like most privacy policies, they’re verbose and full of legal jargon — and opaquely establish companies’ justifications for collecting and selling your data. The data market has become the engine of the internet, and these privacy policies we agree to but don't fully understand help fuel it.

To see exactly how inscrutable they have become, I analyzed the length and readability of privacy policies from nearly 150 popular websites and apps. Facebook’s privacy policy, for example, takes around 18 minutes to read in its entirety – slightly above average for the policies I tested.

Then I tested how easy it was to understand each policy using the Lexile test developed by the education company Metametrics. The test measures a text’s complexity based on factors like sentence length and the difficulty of vocabulary.

[...] The vast majority of these privacy policies exceed the college reading level. And according to the most recent literacy survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, over half of Americans may struggle to comprehend dense, lengthy texts. That means a significant chunk of the data collection economy is based on consenting to complicated documents that many Americans can’t understand.

[...] Despite efforts like the General Data Protection Regulation to make policies more accessible, there seems to be an intractable tradeoff between a policy’s readability and length. Even policies that are shorter and easier to read can be impenetrable, given the amount of background knowledge required to understand how things like cookies and IP addresses play a role in data collection.

“You’re confused into thinking these are there to inform users, as opposed to protect companies,” said Albert Gidari, the consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

RT:

WhatsApp is threatening users who violate its rules with lawsuits, even if the only evidence of “rule-breaking” exists outside of the Facebook-owned messaging app and the only judge is an AI.

“WhatsApp will take legal action against those we determine are engaged in or assisting others in abuse… even if that determination is based on information solely available to us off our platform,” the company warned in an ominous FAQ entry posted on Monday.

The source is RT, but the FAQ linked in the excerpt does say that. Would we want Kellogg's surveilling us to make sure we're using their corn flakes properly?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

China Is Still Multiple Generations Behind In Chip Manufacturing

When it comes to the actual foundries China has within its borders, the picture isn't good for the country. Perhaps the most advanced foundry there is owned by Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC). A company spokesperson late last year said, "Our 14nm technology will start risk production by 2019, 12nm process development is completed and under customer verification."

Keep in mind how much further along the rest of the world is: TSMC (Taiwan) is already producing high performance AMD CPUs on its 7nm process with low power Apple parts having shipped in 2018, Samsung is readying advanced EUV production lines for NVIDIA's next generation of graphics chips, and Intel is rolling out its 7nm-equivalent this year as well. We even reported yesterday that TSMC is now actively developing its 2nm node!

If China's most advanced foundry is only beginning low-volume 14nm production this year, that would put them about four or five years behind the rest of the world. An eternity in the world of semiconductors.

For now, Huawei is building their world-class and cutting edge SoC, Kirin 980 on TSMC's 7nm process. If they were forced to use SMIC's 14nm process it would force them to regress in both performance and efficiency which would be a death-knell. Currently the Kirin 980 can compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon 855, but should Huawei be forced to fab its chips within its own countries[sic] borders this wouldn't be the case.

[...] It seems Chinese companies will have to do things the old fashioned way and grit their way through the learning curve with using these chip-production tools. One way around this would be to hire talent away from companies with a mature understanding of the technology, but even this is proving difficult.

For instance a Chinese DRAM company CXMT attempted to hire away a top Samsung engineer who had expertise in his field, but a South Korean court blocked the move. Kim Chi-wook headed the company's DRAM design team and would be a home-run hire for any DRAM company lacking knowledge. The court made no qualms about the fact that the engineer getting hired by CXMT would potentially hurt Samsung's competitive edge. They wrote, "Chinese semiconductor companies are estimated to be three years to 10 years behind in technology gap regarding DRAM designing technique."

Original Submission

takyon writes:

House holds hearing on "deepfakes" and artificial intelligence amid national security concerns

The House Intelligence Committee heard from experts on the threats that so-called "deep fake" videos and other types of artificial intelligence-generated synthetic data pose to the U.S. election system and national security at large. Witnesses at Thursday's hearing included professors from the University of Maryland, University at Buffalo and other experts on AI and digital policy.

In a statement, the committee says it aims to "examine the national security threats posed by AI-enabled fake content, what can be done to detect and combat it, and what role the public sector, the private sector, and society as a whole should play to counter a potentially grim, 'post-truth' future," during Thursday's hearing.

[...]In his opening remarks, Committee chair Rep. Adam Schiff said the spread of manipulated videos presents a "nightmarish" scenario for the 2020 presidential elections -- leaving lawmakers, members of the news media and public "struggling to discern what is real and what is fake."

Schiff urged that "now is the time for social media companies to put in place policies to protect users from misinformation, not in 2021 after viral deepfakes have polluted the 2020 elections. By then, it will be too late."

See also: Deepfake videos could 'spark' violent social unrest
Lawmakers grapple with deepfake threat at hearing
'AI is not the cause, it's an accelerant. The pace of change is challenging' Experts give Congress deepfakes straight dope
Deepfake Video of Mark Zuckerberg Goes Viral on Eve of House A.I. Hearing

Previously: House Intelligence Committee to Hold Hearing on "Deepfakes"

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Google Stadia requires $130 upfront, $10 per month at November launch:

Players will have to pay $129.99 up front and $9.99 a month, on top of individual game purchase costs, when Google's previously announced Stadia game-streaming service launches in November. A free tier will be available some time in 2020, as will a paid subscription tier that doesn't require the upfront purchase.

The Stadia Founder's Edition and its contingent Stadia Pro subscription will be the only way to get access to the Stadia service when it launches, Google announced today. That $129.99 package, available for pre-order on the Google Store right now, will include:

• A Stadia controller in "limited-edition night blue"
• A Chromecast Ultra
• Three months of Stadia Pro service and a three-month "buddy pass" to give to a friend
• First dibs on claiming a "Stadia Name"

After the first three months, Stadia Pro users will have to pay $9.99 a month to maintain their membership. For that price, they will get access to Google's highest-quality streams, at up to 4K/60fps with high-dynamic range (HDR) and 5.1 surround sound. In 2019, users will not be able to sign up for Stadia Pro without investing in the Founder's Edition hardware package, and Founder's Edition packages will only be available "in limited quantities and for a limited time."

Also at AnandTech, The Verge, and Wccftech.

See also: Is Stadia Already Screwed?
Xbox One And PS4 Don't Need To Fear Google Stadia, Which Is Mired In Contradictions

Previously: Google and Microsoft Eyeing Streaming Game Services
Google Announces "Stadia" Streaming Game Service
Microsoft CFO: Google Stadia Lacks Content, Local Experience Will Remain Superior to Streaming Games

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

Does Alexa illegally record children? Amazon sued for allegedly storing conversations without consent

Amazon's Alexa is the target of a pair of lawsuits that allege the voice assistant violates laws in nine states by illegally storing recordings of children on devices such as the Echo or Echo Dot. It's the latest development in an ongoing debate around Alexa and privacy. The suits were filed in courts in Seattle and Los Angeles on Tuesday, on the eve of Amazon unveiling the latest generation of Echo Dot Kids Edition smart speaker.

Announcing the new version of the devices on Wednesday morning, the company attempted to defuse privacy concerns — saying it built its premium "FreeTime" games and media service for kids with the input of family groups. Amazon said it adheres to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The company added, "None of the Alexa skills included within FreeTime Unlimited have access to or collect personal information from children, and there are multiple ways to delete a child's profile or voice recordings."

However, the suits are about the Alexa assistant and Echo devices more broadly, not just the FreeTime service for kids. The suits name nine states — Florida, California, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington — that prohibit recording conversations without the consent of children or their parents.

"At no point does Amazon warn unregistered users that it is creating persistent voice recordings of their Alexa interactions, let alone obtain their consent to do so," the lawsuits allege. The suits were filed in California and Washington state by lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP and Keller Lenkner LLC.

Also at BGR, MarketWatch, and Seattle Times.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

IBM, KPMG, Merck, Walmart team up for drug supply chain blockchain pilot

IBM announced its latest blockchain initiative today. This one is in partnership with KPMG, Merk and Walmart to build a drug supply chain blockchain pilot.

These four companies are coming together to help come up with a solution to track certain drugs as they move through a supply chain. IBM is acting as the technology partner, KPMG brings a deep understanding of the compliance issues, Merk is of course a drug company and Walmart would be a drug distributor through its pharmacies and care clinics.

The idea is to give each drug package a unique identifier that you can track through the supply chain from manufacturer to pharmacy to consumer. Seems simple enough, but the fact is that companies are loathe to share any data with one another. The blockchain would provide an irrefutable record of each transaction as the drug moved along the supply chain, giving authorities and participants an easy audit trail.

The pilot is part of a set of programs being conducted by various stakeholders at the request of the FDA. The end goal is to find solutions to help comply with the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act. According to the FDA Pilot Program website, "FDA's DSCSA Pilot Project Program is intended to assist drug supply chain stakeholders, including FDA, in developing the electronic, interoperable system that will identify and trace certain prescription drugs as they are distributed within the United States."

Also at Forbes and Motley Fool.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

From Medium article:

https://elemental.medium.com/what-makes-women-strong-2c927bf286ef

"What Makes Women Strong?
Science is revealing that when it comes to physical prowess, women may actually be the more powerful sex"

"If discussions of human physical strength used endurance as the yardstick, women would be strongest. Women have already caught up to, or surpassed, men in some sports like long-distance swimming and ultrarunning, racking up the wins in mixed-gender races (with less support and training than the men). Recently, Camille Herron won 2018's Desert Solstice run, which lasts for 24 hours (she ran 162.9 miles in that time) and Courtney Dauwalter has won 11 mixed-sex ultramarathons, including the Moab 240, a 238-mile race along the Colorado River in Utah. Dauwalter beat the next-fastest competitor there, a man, by 10 hours.

In fact, plenty of research points to the idea that the longer the distance, the better chance a woman has in beating a man, possibly due to a combination of factors like high pain tolerance and less muscle fatigability. There could also be metabolic reasons — some researchers theorize that women burn energy in a way that supports long-distance energy needs. As investigative reporter David Epstein notes in his book, The Sports Gene, when a man and a woman are evenly matched, "the man will typically beat the woman at distances shorter than the marathon, but the woman will win if the race length is extended to forty miles."

[...] "Women are also bodily powerful (the definition of strong) in other ways: Women are also more flexible. "Women tend to have somewhat more laxity in their tendons than men; they are more limber," Dr. Steve Jordan, an orthopedic surgeon at the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine, told The New York Times. Limber people are less likely to get hurt — less time spent on the sidelines or in surgery. Woman also have a very high degree of accuracy — and depending on the physical pursuit, that can make one athlete stronger than the next. Women on the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour regularly significantly outdrive professional men. And according to the National Rifle Association's Colonel Kenneth Haynes — a military logician in the Army who taught both men and women to shoot over a multi-decade career — women shoot guns more accurately: "My units had around 20 percent female personnel in both officer and enlisted ranks. All the women fired Expert their first day, but less than a third of the men did so," writes Haynes."

So, I really wanna hear the fireworks....

Original Submission

c0lo writes:

Two Oil Tankers Attacked in the Middle East, Stoking Fears of Conflict

Two oil tankers on Thursday morning were reportedly attacked near the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial oil transport route that sits between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, echoing a similar attack last month and stoking fears about escalating tensions in the region.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for Thursday's attacks, but the U.S. blamed Iran for last month's bombing of four tankers in the same general area, without offering a clear explanation as to why. Iran denied that allegation, but it is embroiled in several conflicts in the region. It has long feuded with U.S.-allied Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—tensions only heightened by a clash over the civil war in Yemen—and Thursday's incident fueled fears that tensions in the region are approaching a breaking point.

Oil tanker attacks will inflame conflict between the US, its allies and Iran

Thursday's attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman caused jitters in global markets and unease across a region that has been bracing for conflict throughout much of the year. As with the earlier attacks on 12 May, news of the latest strikes was again broken by media outlets aligned to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran, who broadcast images of the attacks within minutes of them taking place.

Pictures of both ships ablaze spoke volumes about what is at stake in one of the world's most strategic waterways, as a regional player withering under ever tightening sanctions stares down a global superpower determined to impose its will.

fliptop writes:

Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader and sociology professor and director of the Center for Theory at the University of Texas at Arlington David Arditi recently speculated on the implications of Apple's announcement that Itunes will be shut down:

During its Worldwide Developers Conference this week in San Jose, California, Apple announced iTunes will no longer exist as a digital jukebox but will be reformed into three separate apps for music, television and podcasts. While the change has been a long time coming — sales of digital music downloads have dropped for six straight years, according to the Recording Industry Association of America — it marks a significant shift in the company's business model and in the kind of consumer behavior that Apple helped shape when it first opened the digital store in 2001. Music lovers were no longer bound to the full purchase of an album that was packaged and sold by a record label; they were free to buy single songs for 99 cents, which ushered in a new era of pick-and-choose consumption.

[...] Apple will continue to sell downloadable music through its iTunes store (located in its Apple Music app), but the repackaging of apps is a recognition that consumers are streaming content more than buying it. Music will be on one app, TV on another, and podcasts on another.

The professors aren't so sure that's a winning strategy. They described themselves as typical consumers who want all their content in one place.

"[Apple was] getting a lot of reports that people thought that iTunes was really clunky, so they wanted to find this way to streamline it, which was to break it into different apps, which seems kind of counterintuitive," Arditi said. "Now, instead of having one app for all these different things, you're going to have three, four, five apps to access different types of media."

Added Fader: "I had the same initial reaction, which is, 'This is not streamlining.'"

Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

http://viralportal.net/scientists-can-now-convert-all-blood-types-into-the-universal-donor-blood-type-o/:

Millions of hospital patients are set to benefit from a new medical breakthrough which turns all donated blood into a universal type (O+).

[...] By modifying an enzyme to snip off the antigens from types A and B blood, they’ve managed to make it more like the universal donor type O+. The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The A and B antigens are sugars that are carried on the surface of red blood cells. It is the combination of these antigens—with blood cells having one, all, or none of these antigens—that give rise to the four principal blood types: A, B, AB, and O. This is what determines which blood you can accept and who you can give blood to. Whilst type O, can be given to anyone as the blood cells have neither A and B antigens, all other types can cause life-threatening immune reactions if given to the wrong patient.

[...] The team [from the University of British Columbia] created the enzyme through a process known as “directed evolution.” This is a method of protein engineering that is based on natural selection and allows a user to evolve a protein, such as an enzyme, towards a desired goal. Starting with an original enzyme, the scientist inserted mutations into the gene that codes for it. By selecting the mutants that were most efficient in removing the antigens, and repeating the process again and again, the researchers were able to make the enzyme 170 times more effective over just five generations.

[...] However, their job, is not yet finished. Whilst the enzyme was able to remove the vast majority of antigens from type A and B blood, they were not able to remove all of them. As the immune system is incredibly sensitive to blood groups—so much so that even small amounts of residual antigen can trigger an immune response—the scientists must first be certain that all antigens are absent.

The study is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society

Also at:
https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/health/scientists-transform-donor-blood-make-5611127
https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-edge-closer-being-able-change-blood-types/
https://www.rt.com/news/461682-blood-type-gut-bacteria/

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

For 20 years, the record for strongest direct-current magnetic field has stood at 45 Tesla. Now, researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, or MagLab, at Florida State University have increased this to 45.5 Tesla using a high temperature copper-oxide superconducting magnet (for comparison, MRI machine magnetic fields run in the 1.5 to 3 Tesla range and there are now existing MRIs which operate at 7 Tesla.)

Seungyong Hahn, associate professor at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering and a MagLab scientist, led the team building the new magnet, which is about the size of a beer can. “Little Big Coil 3” features a superconducting magnet inside of a resistive magnet, and rather than using niobium-tin, it uses a tape coated with a kind of “cuprate” superconductor called rare-earth-barium-copper-oxide (REBCO) that achieves superconductivity at higher temperatures. The tape is only the width of a hair and can be wound tightly, increasing the density of the electrical current and therefore the magnetic field strength. The team also left off the insulation which would otherwise help direct the current, but could cause the superconductor to lose its superconducting properties, or quench. Leaving it off increases the density of the current and allows for safer quenching, according to the paper published in Nature.

Extremely high strength magnetic fields are useful in various fields:

such as medicine (magnetic resonance imaging), pharmacy (nuclear magnetic resonance), particle accelerators (such as the Large Hadron Collider) and fusion devices (for example, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER), as well as for other diverse scientific and industrial uses.

Unfortunately for those with hoverboard dreams, the device requires 31 Megawatts of power to run.

Journal Reference
45.5-tesla direct-current magnetic field generated with a high-temperature superconducting magnet

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have developed light powered nanobio-hybrid organisms that use carbon dioxide and nitrogen as inputs and produce a variety of plastics and fuels

By using light-activated quantum dots to fire particular enzymes within microbial cells, the researchers were able to create "living factories" that eat harmful CO2 and convert it into useful products such as biodegradable plastic, gasoline, ammonia and biodiesel.

The microbes, which lie dormant in water, release their resulting product to the surface, where it can be skimmed off and harvested for manufacturing. Different combinations of dots and light produce different products: Green wavelengths cause the bacteria to consume nitrogen and produce ammonia while redder wavelengths make the microbes feast on CO2 to produce plastic instead.

According to Prashant Nagpal, lead author of the research and an assistant professor in CU Boulder's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, in the future, an ideal application would be:

to have single-family homes and businesses pipe their CO2 emissions directly to a nearby holding pond, where microbes would convert them to a bioplastic.

Journal Reference
Nanorg microbial factories: Light-driven renewable biochemical synthesis using quantum dot-bacteria nano-biohybrids. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2019; DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b02549

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Singularity Hub:

Take two layers of graphene. Twist them so that they are at a very slight angle to each other—1.1 degrees, to be precise—and then stack them together. (This is easier said than done, as the idea was first proposed in 2007 but only realized in 2018.) The resulting bilayer graphene is a superconductor: when the temperature is dropped below a critical threshold, the material has no electrical resistance at all.

[...]The reasoning behind graphene’s “magic angle” arises due to the energy barrier for quantum tunnelling between the two layers of graphene. As you approach the precise angle of rotation (1.1 degrees), the energy barrier becomes very small, allowing electrons to strongly interact and become correlated between the layers. Fabricating this material wasn’t easy—it took the lab at MIT that discovered it several years to learn how to produce layers of graphene where the twist angle was this precisely controlled.

It was discovered that one of their test devices was a perfect insulator; it didn’t allow any electrons to be transmitted. Apply a small voltage, however, adding free electrons to the system, and there is a sudden transition to superconductivity. Once twisted bilayer graphene has been manufactured, its electronic and superconducting properties can be tuned simply by applying electrical fields or pressure to the layers.

The researchers have learned how to finely tune the properties of graphene to transform it from a perfect insulator to a superconductor.

Original Submission