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aristarchus writes:

According to The New York Times, Andrew Anglin, whereabouts unknown, could be on the hook for a bit of cash.

The publisher of a neo-Nazi website should pay more than $14 million in damages for encouraging "an online anti-Semitic harassment and intimidation campaign" against a woman in 2016, a federal magistrate judge in Montana recommended on Monday.

In his opinion, the judge, Jeremiah Lynch, also recommended that the publisher, Andrew Anglin, be made to remove all blog posts from the website, The Daily Stormer, that encouraged readers to contact the woman, Tanya Gersh, and her family.

Within months of Mr. Anglin's call for a "troll storm" against them, Ms. Gersh and her family had received more than 700 vulgar and hateful messages, many referring to the Holocaust. They temporarily fled their home.

Mr. Anglin did not appear in court, and his location is unknown. He did not respond to an email on Monday requesting comment on the lawsuit. And it was not clear how much money if any could ever be collected from him.

Nice that Andrew has gone back to where he's from, allegedly Thailand.

Original Submission

jas writes:

For experienced IT veterans—and PC enthusiasts—there is a common wisdom about the latency between when a version of Windows is released, and when those releases become reliable. Windows XP is the primary example of this, as the original release of XP lacked a variety of important security protections—a rebuilt firewall enabled by default, support for NX bit, and finally disabling the Windows Messenger service abused by spammers, were added in Service Pack 2, three years and a day after XP was first released.

And so, that leaves us with our present circumstances with Windows 10. Roughly seven weeks ago—on May 21—Version 1903 (or 19H1), otherwise known as the May 2019 Update, was released. This marks three years, nine months, and 22 days since the initial release of Windows 10. Reception has been politely positive, though problems with the launch have prompted Microsoft to require users to remove USB storage devices or SD cards before upgrading; likewise, the update was blocked on the Surface Book 2 because a driver problem renders it incapable of seeing the NVIDIA GPU in the base of the high-end model.

Given the positioning of Windows 10 as being essentially the last version of Windows (similar to the way Mac OS X has been around since 2001), it is potentially unwise to declare this exact point in time "as good as it gets." Microsoft's track record is likely to back up this claim, though—at best, Microsoft can deliver iterative changes on top of Windows 10, but the biannual release cadence does not lend itself to massive changes, and further iterative changes are not going to convince the skeptics. If you don't like Windows 10 now, you're not going to like it in the future.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/windows-10-three-years-later-why-this-is-as-good-as-it-gets/

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Want to Colonize Mars? Aerogel Could Help

In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, researchers propose that a material called aerogel might help humans one day build greenhouses and other habitats at Mars' mid-latitudes, where near-surface water ice has been identified. The study was funded by Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Aerogel is a Styrofoam-like solid that is 99% air, making it extremely light. It's adept at preventing the transfer of heat as well, making it an excellent insulator; in fact, it's been used for that purpose on all of NASA's Mars rovers. Moreover, aerogel is translucent, allowing visible light to pass through while blocking ultraviolet light's harmful radiation. Most aerogel is made from silica, the same material found in glass.

In an experiment conducted by lead author Robin Wordsworth of Harvard, 2-3 centimeters of silica aerogel allowed light from a lamp tuned to simulate Martian sunlight to heat the surface beneath it by up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit (65 degrees Celsius) - enough to raise temperatures on the Martian surface and melt water ice.

"The study was meant as an initial test of aerogel's potential as a Martian building material," said second author Laura Kerber, a geologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Kerber participated in a 2015 NASA workshop to identify the best places on Mars to send astronauts. "The ideal place for a Martian outpost would have plentiful water and moderate temperatures," she said. "Mars is warmer around the equator, but most of the water ice is located at higher latitudes. Building with silica aerogel would allow us to artificially create warm environments where there is already water ice available."

Aerogel.

Also at Harvard, Scientific American, and CNET.

Enabling Martian habitability with silica aerogel via the solid-state greenhouse effect (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0813-0) (DX)

Original Submission

aristarchus writes:

From the Beeb.

Computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing will feature on the new design of the Bank of England's £50 note.

He is celebrated for his code-cracking work that proved vital to the Allies in World War Two.

The £50 note will be the last of the Bank of England collection to switch from paper to polymer when it enters circulation by the end of 2021.

The note was once described as the "currency of corrupt elites" and is the least used in daily transactions.

However, there are still 344 million £50 notes in circulation, with a combined value of £17.2bn, according to the Bank of England's banknote circulation figures.

The work of Alan Turing, who was educated in Sherborne, Dorset, helped accelerate Allied efforts to read German Naval messages enciphered with the Enigma machine. Less celebrated is the pivotal role he played in the development of early computers, first at the National Physical Laboratory and later at the University of Manchester.

In 2013, he was given a posthumous royal pardon for his 1952 conviction for gross indecency following which he was chemically castrated. He had been arrested after having an affair with a 19-year-old Manchester man.

The Bank said his legacy continued to have an impact on science and society today.

Not as good as a $20, but the least you can do when your government drove a brilliant logician and computer designer to a premature suicide. Rest in Peace, Alan Turing.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Measles is Killing More People in the DRC Than Ebola-And Faster:

Since January 2019, officials have recorded over 100,000 measles cases in the DRC, mostly in children, and nearly 2,000 have died. The figures surpass those of the latest Ebola outbreak in the country, which has tallied not quite 2,500 cases and 1,665 deaths since August 2018. The totals were noted by World Health Organization Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a speech today, July 15, at the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland.

"Frankly, I am embarrassed to talk only about Ebola," Dr. Tedros said (he goes by his first name). He gave the speech in response to two new developments in the Ebola outbreak. That is that two Ebola responders were murdered in their home in the DRC city of Beni, and that officials on Sunday had identified the first case of Ebola in Goma, a DRC city of over one million at the border with Rwanda.

"Both of these events encapsulate the challenges we continue to face on a daily basis in DRC," he said. Tedros was referring to the scattering of disease—including Ebola and measles—as violence hampers outbreak responses and access to medical care. Since January, officials have counted 198 attacks on health responders, which left seven dead and 58 healthcare works and patients injured.

[...] So far, the Ebola outbreak has largely stayed in DRC's North Kivu and Ituri provinces, which sit on the eastern side of the country and border South Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda. The measles outbreak, on the other hand, has spanned at least 23 of the country's 26 provinces. The health ministry declared an outbreak on June 10 and noted a 700% spike in the case count over the count in the first half of last year.

"And yet it gets little international attention," Dr. Tedro noted, adding that malaria also kills more than 50,000 people each year in the DRC.

Measles cases in developed countries are rarely fatal because of the availability of effective treatment at health care facilities. Measles is one of the most contagious diseases — just entering a room where an infected person passed through a few hours ago could lead to an infection because the disease exhibits airborne transmission. Further, people who have measles are contagious for 1-4 days before they exhibit any symptoms.

Should an outbreak take hold, it could overwhelm facilities' ability to treat all infected people. This is especially so if such an outbreak came during, say, flu season when hospitals are already under an increased load and fewer beds would be available for a concomitant measles outbreak.

And not just for your own health, either. Infants and the immune-compromized rely on herd immunity to keep them safe. As long as something like 93% of people have been vaccinated and have the vaccine "take", any instance of the disease would be hard-pressed to encounter another host to infect. At lower vaccination rates, there are enough susceptible people around that disease transmission becomes increasingly possible to the point that an epidemic could arise.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for SoyCow7671.

T-Mobile quietly reported a sharp rise in police demands for cell tower data – TechCrunch

T-Mobile has reported a small decline in the number of government data requests it receives, according to its latest transparency report, quietly published this week.

The third-largest cell giant in the U.S. reported 459,989 requests during 2018, down by a little over 1% on the year earlier. That includes an overall drop in subpoenas, court orders and pen registers and trap and trace devices used to record the incoming and outgoing callers; however, the number of search warrants issued went up by 27% and wiretaps increased by almost 3%.

The company rejected 85,201 requests, an increase of 7% on the year prior.

[...] For 2018, the company received 70,224 demands for historical call data, up by more than 9% on the year earlier.

Historical cell site location data allows law enforcement to understand which cell towers carried a call, text message or data, and therefore a subscriber’s historical real-time location at any given particular time. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this data was protected and required a warrant before a company is forced to turn it over. The so-called “Carpenter” decision was expected to result in a fall in the number of requests made because the bar to obtaining the records is far higher.

[...] The cell giant also reported that the number of tower dumps went up from 4,855 requests in 2017 to 6,184 requests in 2018, an increase of 27%.

Tower dumps are particularly controversial because these include information for all subscribers whose calls, messages and data went through a cell tower at any given time. That can include the data of hundreds or thousands of innocent subscribers at any time.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Several sites are reporting that Windows 10 telemetry and the invasiveness of Office 365's monitoring mean that schools in the German state of Hesse have been banned from using it. The decision was handed down by the Hesse Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (HBDI — Hessische Beauftragte für Datenschutz und die Informationsfreiheit.) The ban also applies to many other "cloud" services for the same reasons, so Google Docs and Apple's hosted services are banned as well in the same move.

The issue is not solely with hosted services in and of themselves but with the data collection carried out by the services and the question of consent for that with minors. The issue of coerced consent is not raised yet in that context. For the time being, standalone solutions like LibreOffice or Calligra would solve the problem and, many would say, be significantly better all around.

[There used to be a datacenter in Germany — the Deutschland-Cloud — on which the German student data was stored, but that was closed in August 2018. That data was migrated, and new data is now stored, on a European data center that can be accessed by US officials upon request. --Ed.]

9to5Mac: Office 365 banned from German schools, Google Docs and iWork also ruled out
CNet: Microsoft Office 365 banned in some schools over privacy concerns
The Verge: German state bans Office 365 in schools, citing privacy concerns
The Next Web: German schools ban Microsoft Office 365 amid privacy concerns
Original Decision: Stellungnahme des Hessischen Beauftragten für Datenschutz und Informationsfreiheit zum Einsatz von Microsoft Office 365 in hessischen Schulen

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser

The way a single neuron processes information is never the same

How do neurons process information? Neurons are known to break down an incoming electrical signal into sub-units. Now, researchers at Blue Brain have discovered that dendrites, the neuron's tree-like receptors, work together—dynamically and depending on the workload—for learning. The findings further our understanding of how we think and may inspire new algorithms for artificial intelligence.

In a paper published in the journal Cell Reports, researchers at EPFL's Blue Brain Project, a Swiss Brain Research Initiative, have developed a new framework to work out how a single neuron in the brain operates.

The analysis was performed using cells from the Blue Brain's virtual rodent cortex. The researchers expect other types of neurons—non-cortical or human—to operate in the same way.

Their results show that when a neuron receives input, the branches of the elaborate tree-like receptors extending from the neuron, known as dendrites, functionally work together in a way that is adjusted to the complexity of the input.

The strength of a synapse determines how strongly a neuron feels an electric signal coming from other neurons, and the act of learning changes this strength. By analyzing the "connectivity matrix" that determines how these synapses communicate with each other, the algorithm establishes when and where synapses group into independent learning units from the structural and electrical properties of dendrites. In other words, the new algorithm determines how the dendrites of neurons functionally break up into separate computing units and finds that they work together dynamically, depending on the workload, to process information.

takyon writes:

Hawaii Protesters Block Access Road To Stop Construction Of Massive Telescope

About 300 demonstrators are trying to halt construction on the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope, developers of which are supposed to break ground on Hawaii's Big Island this week. Before the sun came up on the summit of Mauna Kea, the island's tallest mountain, a group of about half a dozen protesters chained themselves to a grate in the road at the base of the dormant volcano in an attempt to block workers from accessing the only paved road onto the what they say is a sacred site.

Imai Winchester, a teacher from Oahu who was among the protesters chained to the road, said he arrived at about 3 a.m. local time. "A handful of us committed ourselves to this action to bring light to the situation here," Winchester told KHON. The goal of the civil disobedience, he said, is to inform people about the "desecration of our lands, the failure of the state and its agencies to properly manage something that is important." He added that he expected to be arrested for the nonviolent protest but that it is the group's "burden as well as our privilege to show our children and the rest of the world how much we love our land."

Daniel Meisenzahl, a spokesman for the University of Hawaii, a member of the international partnership of scientists behind the telescope, said it is unclear if the protest has delayed construction convoys.

Previously: Divisive Giant Telescope Cleared for Construction on Hawaiian Peak

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Ebola Outbreak: First Case Discovered in DRC's Goma City, Home to 2 Million People:

The first case of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo city of Goma has been discovered.

Goma, a lakeside city with a population of two million people, is close to the Rwanda border – more than 354 km (220 miles) south of where the second-largest Ebola outbreak was first detected a year ago.

The haemorrhagic fever has gradually spread south, infecting almost 2,500 people and killing more than 1,600.

The Ministry of Health said the person with the confirmed case was a pastor who became infected during a visit to the city of Butembo, where he interacted with Ebola patients.

He first developed symptoms last week before taking a bus to Goma on Friday.

When he arrived in Goma on Sunday he went to a clinic where he tested positive for Ebola.

Officials have now located the bus driver and 18 other passengers, who will all be vaccinated on Monday.

takyon and martyb write:

SpaceX and NASA detail cause of Dragon test failure, crewed flight this year looks 'increasingly difficult'

SpaceX held a press conference on Monday to discuss the results of a months-long investigation conducted by itself and NASA into an anomaly that took place during a static fire test in April. The investigation found that the "anomaly" that occurred during the test was the result of oxidizer mixing with the helium component of the SuperDraco rocket engine propellant system at very high pressure.

On April 20, SpaceX held an abort engine test for a prototype of its Crew Dragon vehicle (which had been flown previously for the uncrewed ISS mission). Crew Dragon is designed to be the first crew-carrying SpaceX spacecraft, and is undergoing a number of tests to prove to NASA its flight-readiness. After the first few tests proved successful, the test encountered a failure that was instantly visible, with an unexpected explosion that produced a plume of fire visible for miles around the testing site at its Landing Zone 1 facility in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

Also at Ars Technica and Teslarati.

See also:
SpaceX's response to Crew Dragon explosion unfairly maligned by head of NASA
Update: In-Flight Abort Static Fire Test Anomaly Investigation

Previously: Reuters: Boeing Starliner Flights to the ISS Delayed by at Least Another 3 Months
SpaceX Crew Dragon Suffers "Anomaly" During Static Fire Test
Investigation Into Crew Dragon Incident Continues

[Ed Note - The article at Teslarati has a good description of the suspected failure.]

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Now You Can Buy NASA's Own Original Apollo 11 Moon Landing Footage:

Got a player for 2-inch Quadruplex videotapes sitting around? You could view original NASA recordings of the Apollo 11 moon landing in your living room.

Sotheby's is auctioning off three first-generation tapes of the historic touchdown as part of its July 20 auction of space exploration artifacts set to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing.

The tapes run a total of 2 hours and 24 minutes and capture moments including Neil Armstrong declaring, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Also on the tapes are the "long-distance phone call" with President Richard Nixon and the planting of the American flag on the lunar surface.

[...] Gary George, an engineering student and NASA intern, purchased the tapes for $217.77 at a government surplus auction in 1976. It's estimated they'll sell for at least a $1 million at the Sotheby's event.

I was under the impression that the original tapes had been lost or recorded over. Does anyone else remember hearing that? Either way, this is a irreplaceable national treasure and I am astonished at seeing these up for auction. I am hopeful some philanthropist steps up, buys them, perhaps makes a personal copy, and then donates them to the Library of Congress.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for systemd.

New Election Systems Use Vulnerable Software:

Pennsylvania's message was clear: The state was taking a big step to keep its elections from being hacked in 2020. Last April, its top election official told counties they had to update their systems. So far, nearly 60% have taken action, with $14.15 million of mostly federal funds helping counties buy brand-new electoral systems.

But there's a problem: Many of these new systems still run on old software that will soon be outdated and more vulnerable to hackers.

An Associated Press analysis has found that like many counties in Pennsylvania, the vast majority of 10,000 election jurisdictions nationwide use Windows 7 or an older operating system to create ballots, program voting machines, tally votes and report counts.

That's significant because Windows 7 reaches its "end of life" on Jan. 14, meaning Microsoft stops providing technical support and producing "patches" to fix software vulnerabilities, which hackers can exploit. In a statement to the AP, Microsoft said Friday it would offer continued Windows 7 security updates for a fee through 2023.

Critics say the situation is an example of what happens when private companies ultimately determine the security level of election systems with a lack of federal requirements or oversight. Vendors say they have been making consistent improvements in election systems. And many state officials say they are wary of federal involvement in state and local elections.

It's unclear whether the often hefty expense of security updates would be paid by vendors operating on razor-thin profit margins or cash-strapped jurisdictions. It's also uncertain if a version running on Windows 10, which has more security features, can be certified and rolled out in time for primaries.

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for systemd.

Visa's vision for the future of payments is password-free

Visa believes the payment industry can move away from passwords in the next five years thanks to advancements in authentication and anti-fraud technologies that are already making "static" cardholder verification (CVM) methods such as signature and PINs optional.

With the ability of financial institutions and merchants to share 10 times more data with each other than ever before, and the growing sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) that is making fraud detection faster and more accurate, Visa head of product Axel Boye-Moller believes that as this ecosystem evolves to be more secure, and AI and biometrics capabilities further mature, there is a future where legacy verification methods are eventually eliminated.

"Over the last few years as mobile technology has evolved, we're seeing increasingly biometrics included in mobile hardware -- that's really starting to take off as more and more banks and other providers start rolling out mobile payment solutions," Boye-Moller told ZDNet.

"But there's still a lot of ground to cover. Passwords can be incredibly frustrating. You forget them and they can be stolen."

[...] Additionally, Boye-Moller said as more payments are conducted via a mobile device, it becomes "very fiddly" to enter a password on smaller devices.

Increasingly, he added, there has been an explosion in the amount of connected devices that are accompanied by more online accounts and subscription-based payment requirements.

"We think biometrics is absolutely a critical part of that solution -- both convenient and secure," he said.

"The way they rolled out [mobile payments] standards is that every single transaction that is done or adopted is biometrically authenticated with a fingerprint or facial recognition."

While he said biometrics is part of the solution of moving to a password-free world, he believes it requires many other layers on top of that to drive more secure and convenient solutions.

"We believe that if we continue to collaborate strongly across industry we can we can reduce the current fraud rates by half by 2025," Boye-Moller added.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for systemd.

Congress mobilizes on cyber threats to electric grid:

Lawmakers are zeroing in on the potential for foreign cyber attacks to take down the U.S. electric grid, with members in both chambers pushing hearings and a flurry of bills to address the issue.

Congressional interest in the issue is growing following reports that Iran has stepped up its cyber attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure, and as Trump administration officials cite threats from Russia and China against the electric grid.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee focused on threats to the grid during a hearing on Friday, as lawmakers look to get ahead of the issue.

[...] [Assistant secretary of the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER). Karen] Evans highlighted the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) earlier this year on the threat.

The assessment found that Russia not only has the ability to execute cyber attacks against the U.S. electric grid, but is also "mapping our critical infrastructure with the long-term goal of being able to cause substantial damage."

On China, the ODNI warned that the country "has the ability to launch cyber attacks that cause localized, temporary disruptive effects on critical infrastructure."