SoylentNews

There have been many reports of AirBNB hosts spying on their guests with hidden cameras. This level of perversion has been one upped on a beach in Australia with a custom made device with a camera in a water bottle:

Tourist Michelle Montcourt, from Mexico, said she found the camera while sunbathing at Brighton-Le-Sands Beach in Sydney's south.

St George Police confirmed the bottle was handed into police on Friday and an investigation was underway.

"As the investigation is in its early stages, no further information is available," a spokesman for St George Police said.

She said a man who appeared to be aged in his 30s placed the device, disguised as a San Benedetto water bottle, in the sand behind her. He then ran off when she went to throw the bottle in the bin and noticed the camera.

[...] "I was in Brighton-Le-Sands tanning and noticed a man walk by and place what seemed to be a bottle of water directly behind me," she said.

"I saw it and thought to myself 'I can't believe he left his rubbish on the beach', so I picked it up to throw it away and noticed there was a hidden camera inside.

"He left running when I saw the camera inside the water bottle."

This purpose-made spy cam bottle is an extension of the devices now being used across the globe to discretely record people. Where will it end?

Original Submission

martyb writes:

[Update (2019/10/19 21:02:00 UTC): Both sodium and fluorine have rebooted. Next up will be beryllium rebooting 1d12h from now. That leaves rebooting of helium 18h later and 3h after that will have boron being rebooted. Again, any impact visible to the community should be minimal. See TMB's note, below. --martyb]

We have just learned that Linode, the provider of SoylentNews' server infrastructure, is planning a number of reboots.

[TMB Note]: This shouldn't mean any downtime for anything user-facing except IRC. There will be a few minutes where the comment counts won't update on the front page but those aren't realtime anyway and a few minutes where subscription updates will be delayed until the server that processes them comes back up.

Recently, we identified a commit to the upstream Linux kernel[1] as the cause of an increase in emergency maintenance on our platform. After implementing, testing, deploying, and gaining confidence in a fix, we are now ready to roll this update out to the remainder of our fleet. We're confident this will resolve the bug and ultimately lessen the amount of unplanned maintenance for your Linodes as a result of this specific issue.

To complete this, we will be performing maintenance on a subset of Linode's host machines. This maintenance will update the underlying infrastructure that Linodes reside on and will not affect the data stored within them.

If you are on an affected host, your maintenance window will be communicated to you via a Support ticket within the next few days. You can prepare your Linode for this maintenance by following our Reboot Survival Guide[2].

During the actual maintenance window, your Linode will be cleanly shut down and will be unavailable while we perform the updates. A two-hour window is allocated, however the actual downtime should be much less. After the maintenance has concluded, each Linode will be returned to its last state (running or powered off).

This status page will be updated once maintenance is complete.

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/1/8/905
[2] https://linode.com/docs/uptime/reboot-survival-guide/

The first server reboot is currently scheduled for Friday, 2019-10-18 at 05:00:00 UTC.

Read on after the fold for more details on the scheduled maintenance dates and times.

Chocolate writes:

When is a shoe not a shoe? When it contains a spring, apparently, according to commentators who are taking offense at shoes worn by marathon winner Eliud Kipchoge being discussed as being potentially performance enhancing to the point that it gives the wearer an unfair advantage. Many sports have limits on what modifications are acceptable to equipment in a competition to ensure the event is fair for all competitors.

Some people believe that the shoe construction[*] provides a clear mechanical advantage which should be disallowed in competition. With people like Lance Armstrong being caught out, is it any wonder more focus will be on other sports in the future?

[*] Tweet by Darren Rovell:

"When a shoe company puts multiple carbon plates in a shoe with cushion between the plates, it is no longer a shoe. It's a spring and a clear mechanical advantage." — Runner @ryanhall3 on Eliud Kipchoge's unreleased Nikes for his sub 2 marathon.

Picture of the shoe with cross-section from the tweet showing the "Zoom Air Bags" and the "Carbon Fiber Plates".

[Editor's Comment: This was not an attempt at setting a record. It would never be recognised as a record - this was known before he even started running - because he had a vehicle pacing him showing a laser plot on the ground before him indicating where he had to be to get under 2 hours, he used 35 other pacemakres who took it in turns to run sections of the route with him, they acknowledged the controversy over the shoes which were worn by Kipchoge and each of the pacemakers, and there were no other competitors. Any of those things would negate a claim that this was a record. The shoes have not, however, been ruled illegal by the sport's governing body. He did the marathon under 2 hours to show that it was possible, not to claim any record. The whole thing was organised under the banner 'There are no limits' and was intended to spur non-athletes into taking up some form of exercise. Nevertheless, nobody else has run the marathon in under 2 hours, with or without similar shoes, and everyone is eligible to go for the record if they wish to do so.]

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Arctic's Freezer 50 TR Air Cooler w/ RGB for AMD's Threadripper Launched

The manufacturer does not disclose the cooler's rated TDP, but says that it can cool down Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX as well as CPUs 'of 32 cores and beyond'. So as we've seen with some other air coolers of this size (which can handle upwards of 340W) it's a reasonable bet that the 50 TR can dissipate at least 250 W of heat, leaving some additional headroom for overclocking and/or future processors with a higher TDP.

The back of the box says "It is an extremely powerful cooling solution for AMD sTR4 Threadripper® CPU, capable of efficiently and quietly cooling even 32- and 64-core CPUs with a TDP up to 250 W." sTR4 = Socket TR4.

Other leaks suggest that 24-core and 32-core Threadripper models will launch in November, alongside the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, while 48-core and 64-core models will launch in January 2020. Some features, including 8-channel memory support, may require new motherboards.

Here's a speculated lineup of a 24-core 3960X, 32-core 3970X, 48-core 3980X, and 64-core 3990X alongside older models.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Last Monday's blockade of Barcelona's airport by Catalonian indepedence protestors, which delayed over 100 flights, had a technological twist as the Guardian reports:

Tellingly, the airport occupation – with its echoes of the enduring protests in Hong Kong – was not called by the two biggest traditional pro-independence civil society groups, the Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural. It was the brainchild of a secretive new group called Tsunami Democràtic that is using apps and social media to control and co-ordinate the protests.

TechCrunch has a more in-depth article about the Tsuami Democràtic app and infrastructure. Users need to activate the app with QR codes—displayed at special events—to receive notifications of upcoming protests. The app seems to have taken a lot of inspiration from the Hong Kong protest movement, with a crowd-sourced map dynamically mapping road blocks and police presence in the area.

The group behind the app is described as a "technical elite" of unknown number or identity. Protests are organised (and canceled) by the app administrators with users signing up to attend. It's not clear who is behind, or financially backing the app; Catalonian tech expats, wealthy backers, or independence groups like CDR (Comitès de Defensa de la República) who have organised similar protests in the past.

This isn't the first technological solution for communicating out of sight of the Spanish state, perceived as increasingly authoritarian by some in the independence movement. Whatsapp was used during the 2017 referendum attempt, and Telegram's Messenger has seen a recent surge in Spanish downloads. On Friday, Spain's high court has ordered the Civil Guard to close down Tsunami Democratic's website and social media accounts. As TechCrunch notes:

"For Tsunami Democràtic and Catalonia's independence movement generally this week's protests look to be just the start of a dug-in, tech-fuelled guerrilla campaign of civil disobedience"

The app is currently only available on Android. There is no iOS version as the "politics of the App Store is very restrictive".

Original Submission

Mark Hurd, Oracle CEO, has died

calmond writes:

CNN reports Mark Hurd, Oracle CEO, has died:

Mark Hurd, CEO of Oracle and former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, two of Silicon Valley's most storied companies, has died. He was 62.

Oracle Founder and Chairman Larry Ellison confirmed Hurd's death Friday.

"Mark was my close and irreplaceable friend, and trusted colleague," Ellison said in a memo to Oracle employees that was posted on Mark Hurd's personal website. "Oracle has lost a brilliant and beloved leader who personally touched the lives of so many of us during his decade at Oracle. All of us will miss Mark's keen mind and rare ability to analyze, simplify and solve problems quickly."

Hurd took a leave of absence from ORCL) a month ago for unspecified medical reasons. At the time, he said in a message to employees: "I've decided that I need to spend time focused on my health." He had been a chief executive and board director at the company since 2014. He served alongside Safra Catz, who also has the title of CEO. Ellison took over Hurd's responsibilities when he left.

Former Oracle Co-CEO Mark Hurd Has Passed Away

takyon writes:

Former Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd has passed away

Mark Hurd, who until last month was one of two CEOs leading the database software giant Oracle, has passed away at age 62, one month after telling employees in a letter that he was taking a leave of absence owing to health reasons.

Staffers, who were notified that Hurd died earlier this morning, have been offering their condolences on Twitter.

Hurd joined Oracle nine years ago, after spending five years with Hewlett-Packard, where he was CEO, president and, ultimately, board chairman, all roles from which he was pressured to resign in 2010 after submitting inaccurate expense reports that concealed his personal relationship with an outside consultant to the company.

Previously: Larry Ellison Steps Down (But Not Going Away)

Original Submission #1, Original Submission #2

black6host writes:

First off, sorry for the WaPo link. It was just too much to resist. Noscript is your friend... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/10/17/appeal-young-catholics-vatican-unveils-erosary-an-electronic-way-pray/

Pope Francis has made waves as a modernizer of the Roman Catholic Church as he signals new openness to divorced worshipers and considers loosening celibacy requirements for priests.

This week, the Vatican turned heads with another nod to changing times: a wearable "Click to Pray eRosary" complete with a smartphone app, the religious organization's latest attempt to connect with young people.

Made of 10 dark beads and a "smart cross" to store data, the $110 rosary, which can be worn as a bracelet, syncs up with what Vatican News calls "the official prayer app of the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network."

After activating the device by making the sign of the cross, users can then choose to either pray a standard rosary, a contemplative one and different kinds of thematic rosaries that will be updated every year, Vatican News said. The smart rosary keeps track of the user's progress.

Hmmm. Ok. Also from the article:

"The Catholic Church is trying — and maybe its kind of late into the game — to reclaim a generation that is close to being lost because of all the polarization and scandals within Catholicism and the general secularization of culture," he told The Washington Post.

I don't think they understand that neither the eRosary nor the plastic Jesus on the dashboard of their car is going to help much.

[Updated with breaking news.--martyb] According to an exclusive story in The Register, Deus ex hackina: It took just 10 minutes to find data-divulging demons corrupting Pope's Click to Pray eRosary app:

“One of our researchers decided to check out the code, and in just 10 minutes found some glaring issues,” Andrew Mabbitt, founder of Fidus, told The Register on Friday. “It looks like someone’s taken a fitness band app and bodged it together with existing code that leaves any user account hackable.”

An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/10/18/melz-o18.html

As it was, footage aired by the Russian-funded RT outlet showed a grand total of four people in the audience, surrounded by rows of empty chairs. To date, the RT article, and an accompanying video, appears to be the only report on the briefing by any media outlet in the world.

[...] The press boycott is all the more striking given that even corporate publications have acknowledged that if Assange is extradited from Britain to the US, it will establish a precedent for journalists anywhere in the world to be hauled before US courts for the "crime" of publishing true and newsworthy information that the American government sought to conceal.

The New York Times and the Washington Post, moreover, have noted that the 17 Espionage Act charges that have been levelled against Assange by the Trump administration pose a direct threat to the US Constitution's press freedom protections, and could be used against other publications in the future—including their own.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram_

Human guinea pigs prepare for the world's longest direct flight: 20 hours

For decades, travelers have endured jet lag as an unavoidable menace on long journeys. Now, as airlines push for record-breaking nonstop flights halfway around the planet, efforts to counter the debilitating symptoms are turning into a billion-dollar industry.

Fresh insight into the physical and emotional toll of ultra-long-haul travel should emerge this weekend when Qantas Airways Ltd. flies direct from New York to Sydney. No airline has ever completed that route without stopping. At nearly 20 hours, it's set to be the world's longest flight, leaving the U.S. on Friday and landing in Australia on Sunday morning, Aussie time.

This will be more than an endurance exercise. Scientists and medical researchers in the cabin will turn Qantas' new Boeing Co. Dreamliner into a high-altitude laboratory. They'll screen the brains of the pilots for alertness while monitoring the food consumption, sleep and activity of the few dozen passengers. The aim is to see how humans hold up to the ordeal.

The proliferation of super-long flights — Singapore Airlines Ltd. resumed nonstop services to New York last year — is partly driven by the development of lighter, more aerodynamic aircraft that can fly farther.

The physical burden on customers is putting a renewed focus on jet lag and creating a supermarket of products and homemade creations to ease the suffering. In that shopping basket: melatonin tablets, Pfizer Inc.'s antianxiety medication Xanax, and Propeaq light-emitting glasses that claim to get the body back on track. And yes, there's an app for that and many other potential remedies.

The potential customer base is staggering. The International Air Transport Assn. expects some 4.6 billion people to take a flight in 2019, a total that will jump to 8.2 billion in 2037.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Microsoft will soon begin nagging users running Windows 7 Professional to remind them that the operating system is soon to be shelved.

"We are now extending the notifications ... to Windows 7 Pro[fessional] devices to ensure our customers are aware of the end of support for Windows 7 and can take action to remain productive and secure," says an Oct. 15 update to a company blog post first published in March.

The original post confirmed that Microsoft would push notifications to Windows 7 systems in the months ahead - reprising a move it made in 2014 prior to Windows XP's retirement - but at the time, the company said nothing about limiting the on-screen alerts to Windows 7 Home Premium.

Like those earlier nags, the ones showing up on Windows 7 Professional PCs should include a way to reject future notifications and a button that leads users to more information.

[...]As late as July, the support document associated with KB4493132 claimed that the nag would "not install on devices running Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows 7 as well as Windows Server products" because the "update is not applicable for devices in managed organizations." The latest nag plan would seem to break that pledge.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Good news – America's nuke arsenal to swap eight-inch floppy disks for solid-state drives

The US Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS) has reportedly replaced the ancient eight-inch floppy disks it uses to store data on the US nuclear arsenal.

Defense news site C4ISRNET today cites officers from the Air Force 595th Strategic Communications Squadron – the unit that actually manages the system – in reporting that earlier this summer, the antiquated IBM floppy drives were replaced with what was described as a "highly-secure solid state digital storage solution."

[...] The eight inch disks, developed in the 1960s at IBM's San Jose skunkworks, each held about 80KB of data on the current state of the nation's nuclear forces. The drives had been among the units slated for replacement as part of a "modernization" effort.

Emphasis on the quote marks, as in this case there is still plenty of 1970s tech that is going to continue being used. The report notes that the Air Force favors the Series/1 machine for SACCS in part because the ancient machine cannot be accessed with conventional network protocols, adding extra layers of security to the program.

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Project Trident will be built on Void Linux starting January 2020 and leave its current base of TrueOS behind. This will immediately improve GPU driver support, sound card and streaming, wireless networking, and, for the first time, add Bluetooth capabilities as well as providing newer versions of user applications.

Currently, Project Trident is based on FreeBSD and uses the TrueOS build framework. Over the years, we have accumulated multiple long-standing issues with the underlying FreeBSD OS. Issues with hardware compatibility, communications standards, or package availability continue to limit Project Trident users. After many years of waiting for solutions, there don't appear to be any resolutions on the horizon. To continue to strive for the stated project goals, we have had to make the difficult decision to shift our focus and move to an operating system that better suits what Project Trident is trying to deliver to our users.

Earlier on SN:
TrueOS Doesn't Want to Be 'BSD for Desktop' Anymore (2018)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Senators propose near-total ban on worker noncompete agreements

A bipartisan pair of senators has introduced legislation to drastically limit the use of noncompete agreements across the US economy.

"Noncompete agreements stifle wage growth, career advancement, innovation, and business creation," argued Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) in a Thursday press release. He said that the legislation, co-sponsored with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), would "empower our workers and entrepreneurs so they can freely apply their talents where their skills are in greatest demand."

Noncompete agreements ban workers from performing similar work at competing firms for a limited period—often one or two years. These agreements have become widely used in recent decades—and not just for employees with sensitive business intelligence or client relationships.

"We heard from people working at pizza parlors, yogurt shops, hairdressers, and people making sandwiches," Massachusetts state Rep. Lori Ehrlich told us in an interview last year.

Ehrlich was the author of 2018 Massachusetts legislation limiting the enforcement of noncompete agreements. Several other states—including Oregon, Illinois, and Maryland—have passed bills on the subject. These state reforms focused on reining in the worst abuses of noncompete agreements. Some prohibit the use of noncompete clauses with low-wage workers. Others require employers to give employees notice of the requirement at the time they make a job offer.

The Young and Murphy bill goes much further, completely banning noncompete agreements outside of a few narrow circumstances—like someone selling their own business.

[...]At least one leading presidential candidate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), is interested in this issue. Last year, Warren co-sponsored a noncompete reform bill with Murphy and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). So expect this issue to get attention in the next few years if Warren captures the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for carny

Unpatched Linux bug may open devices to serious attacks over Wi-Fi

A potentially serious vulnerability in Linux may make it possible for nearby devices to use Wi-Fi signals to crash or fully compromise vulnerable machines, a security researcher said.

The flaw is located in the RTLWIFI driver, which is used to support Realtek Wi-Fi cards in Linux devices. The vulnerability triggers a buffer overflow in the Linux kernel when a machine with a Realtek Wi-Fi card is within radio range of a malicious device. At a minimum, exploits would allow denial-of-service attacks and possibly could allow a hacker to gain complete control of the computer. The flaw dates back to version 3.12 of the Linux kernel released in 2013.

"The bug is serious," Nico Waisman, who is a principal security engineer at Github, told Ars. "It's a vulnerability that triggers an overflow remotely through Wi-Fi on the Linux kernel, as long as you're using the Realtek (RTLWIFI) driver."

The vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2019-17666. Linux developers proposed a fix on Wednesday that will likely be incorporated into the OS kernel in the coming days or weeks. Only after that will the fix make its way into various Linux distributions.

Waisman said he has not yet devised a proof-of-concept attack that exploits the vulnerability in a way that can execute malicious code on a vulnerable machine.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Evidence of behavioral, biological similarities between compulsive overeating and addiction

According to Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers the chronic cyclic pattern of overeating followed by undereating, reduces the brain's ability to feel reward and may drive compulsive eating. This finding suggests that future research into treatment of compulsive eating behavior should focus on rebalancing the mesolimbic dopamine system -- the part of the brain responsible for feeling reward or pleasure.

An estimated 15 million people compulsively eat in the U.S. It is a common feature of obesity and eating disorders, most notably, binge eating disorder. People often overeat because it is pleasurable in the short term, but then attempt to compensate by dieting, reducing calorie intake and limiting themselves to "safe," less palatable food. However, diets often fail, causing frequent "relapse" to overeating of foods high in fat and sugar (palatable foods).

"We are just now beginning to understand the addictive-like properties of food and how repeated overconsumption of high sugar -- similar to taking drugs -- may affect our brains and cause compulsive behaviors," said corresponding author Pietro Cottone, PhD, associate professor of pharmacology & experimental therapeutics at BUSM and co-director of the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders.

In order to better understand compulsive and uncontrollable eating, Cottone and his team performed a series of experiments on two experimental models: one group received a high sugar chocolate-flavored diet for two days each week and a standard control diet the remaining days of the week (cycled group), while the other group, received the control diet all of the time (control group). The group that cycled between the palatable food and the less palatable, spontaneously developed compulsive, binge eating on the sweet food and refused to eat regular food. Both groups were then injected with a psychostimulant amphetamine, a drug that releases dopamine and produces reward, and their behavior in a battery of behavioral tests was then observed.

[...]"We found that the cycled group display similar behavioral and neurobiological changes observed in drug addiction: specifically, a "crash" in the brain reward system," explained Cottone. "This study adds to our understanding of the neurobiology of compulsive eating behavior. Compulsive eating may derive from the reduced ability to feel reward. These findings also provide support to the theory that compulsive eating has similarities to drug addiction."

Journal Reference:
Catherine F. Moore, Michael Z. Leonard, Nicholas M. Micovic, Klaus A. Miczek, Valentina Sabino, Pietro Cottone. Reward sensitivity deficits in a rat model of compulsive eating behavior. Neuropsychopharmacology, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41386-019-0550-1

Original Submission