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upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for Runaway1956

Kids outsmart Apple's new parental controls

As device usage and smartphone addiction increases and the impact of social media becomes increasingly negative, Apple announces a new IOS 12 update feature which focuses on "digital health".

It allows users to set restrictions on how much time is spent on apps, and schedule “downtime” in which certain apps cannot be used at all. A great tool to allow parents to impose restrictions on their children’s device usage — or so they thought.

As most parents will agree, kids are always one step ahead. Recently, on an r/apple Reddit discussion, parents began sharing stories about how their children are beating the new settings on their Apple devices.

“When iOS 12 came out I limited my 7-year old son’s screen time through the family share. For a few days I felt like he was playing a bit more than he should, but I couldn't figure out why,” one parent stated.

“Finally today, my son revealed his hack: When he runs out of screen time and his games get locked, he heads to App Store, downloads a previously installed (but later removed) game through the cloud icon, and it works without limitations!”

[NB: The story is from a company, ikydz, that sells Internet Parental Control software.--martyb]

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

New test diagnoses Lyme disease within 15 minutes

Current testing for Lyme disease, called the standard 2-tiered approach or the STT, involves running two complex assays (ELISA and western blot) to detect antibodies against the bacterium, and requires experienced personnel in a lab, and a few hours to carry out and interpret. Biomedical engineers have developed a rapid microfluidic test that can detect Lyme disease with similar performance as the STT in a much shorter time -- 15 minutes.

[...]The researchers evaluated 142 samples, including patients with early Lyme disease, healthy individuals from areas where Lyme disease is endemic, and those with Lyme arthritis. They first screened a set of known diagnostic Lyme disease biomarkers for their ability to detect Lyme disease infection. They then tested the top three biomarkers using a standard enzyme immunoassay, and then mChip-LD, an advanced microfluidic platform developed by Sam Sia, to test the samples.

When tested against additional samples of serum from people with Lyme disease, the multiplexed set of biomarkers was more sensitive than standard Lyme disease tests, while also exhibiting high specificity. The team found that it was better at picking up signs of Lyme disease infection in early-stage samples--possibly because it was able to detect antibodies that peak in the first weeks after someone is infected with Lyme disease.

When the test was run on Sia's mChip-LD platform, it worked very well, showing strong potential for the development of a point-of-care test for Lyme disease.

Further information:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01142-19

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for Runaway1956:

California law bans for-profit, private prisons, immigration detention centers

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Friday [October 11] that would eliminate private, for-profit prisons, including those used for immigration detention, by 2028.

Starting on Jan. 2020, the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation won't be able to enter into or renew a contract with a private, for-profit prison to incarcerate people.

Operating a private immigration detention facility and incarcerating people in for-profit prisons will be prohibited after Jan. 2028, according to the newly signed law.

[...] The Adelanto Detention Facility, which is one of the nation's biggest privately-run immigration detention centers, will be phased out under the new law.

This past summer, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General released a report that found "egregious violations of detention standards" at the Adelanto Detention Facility, including "nooses in detainee cells, improper and overly restrictive segregation, and inadequate detainee medical care."

[...] GEO Group, a for-profit prison company with dozens of facilities in California including the Adelanto Facility, previously has stated that the bill "works against the state's Proposition 57 anti-recidivism goals approved by the voters," referring to a ballot proposition passed in 2016 to reduce the number of people who were re-incarcerated in the state.

The company reported revenues of $2.33 billion in 2018, up from $2.26 billion in 2017. The facilities have been criticized for employing immigrants for as little as $1 a day.

Original Submission

Runaway1956 writes:

rysiek on Mastodon has announced an anticensorship project - https://mastodon.social/@rysiek hosted at https://git.occrp.org/libre/samizdat:

Samizdat[*]

A browser-based solution to Web censorship, implemented as a JavaScript library to be deployed easily on any website. Uses Service Workers and a suite of non-standard in-browser delivery mechanisms, with string[sic] focus on decentralized tools like Gun and IPFS.

Ideally, users should not need to install any special software nor change any settings to continue being able to access a blocked Samizdat-enabled site as soon as they are able to access it once.

Rationale

While a number of censorship circumvention technologies exist, these typically require those who want to access the blocked content (readers) to install specific tools (applications, browser extensions, VPN software, etc.), or change their settings (DNS servers, HTTP proxies, etc.). This approach does not scale.

At the same time, large-scale Internet censorship solutions are deployed in places like Azerbaijan or Tajikistan, effectively blocking whole nations from accessing information deemed non grata by the relevant governments. And with ever growing centralization of the Web, censorship has never been easier.

This project explores the possibility of solving this in a way that would not require the reader to install any special software or change any settings; the only thing that's needed is a modern web browser, and being able to visit a website that deployed this tool once, caching the JavaScript library.

Architecture

A ServiceWorker is used as a way to persist the censorship circumvention library after the initial visit to the participating website.

After the ServiceWorker is downloaded and activated, it handles all fetch() events by first trying to use the regular HTTPS request to the original website. If that fails (for whatever reason, be it timeout, or a 4xx/5xx error), the plugins kick-in, attempting to fetch the content via any means [that] are available.

Click through his test page, https://cdn.test.occrp.org/projects/samizdat/ to find out more.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps

[*] The name of the project, samizdat, is presumably based on its historical use as described on Wikipedia:

Samizdat (Russian: Самизда́т, lit. "self-publishing") was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader. This grassroots practice to evade official Soviet censorship was fraught with danger, as harsh punishments were meted out to people caught possessing or copying censored materials. Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows: "Samizdat: I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend jail time for it myself."^[1]

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Charges that Exxon Mobil misled investors on the financial risks of climate change will be heard in court this month after a New York judge gave the green light for a trial.

[...] Barry Ostrager, a New York judge, rejected motions on Wednesday night and set a trial to begin next Tuesday.

The lawsuit alleges that Exxon defrauded investors by claiming to fully account for the financial impact of future climate change mitigation policies, when it was not actually doing so.

[...] "As a result of Exxon's fraud, the company was exposed to far greater risk from climate change regulations than investors were led to believe," according to the complaint, which said the scheme enabled Exxon to avoid large asset write-downs that would have represented billions of dollars in lost revenue.

The complaint points the finger at the highest levels of Exxon, including former chief executive and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who "knew for years that the company's representations... were misleading," the complaint said.

An Exxon spokesman said the New York case against it "is misleading and deliberately misrepresents" the company's practices for assessing climate policies.

"The New York Attorney General's allegations are false," the spokesman said.

[...] In August 2018, the US Securities and Exchange Commission ended an investigation into Exxon's decision not to write down assets because of future climate change regulations, taking no action against the company.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The number of patients waiting for a kidney transplant continues to increase, and approximately 5,000 waitlisted patients in the United States die each year while waiting for a deceased donor kidney transplant. Nonetheless, more than 3500 kidneys -- 20% of all kidneys procured for transplantation -- are discarded annually. Given the better survival associated with receiving a transplant with any quality organ compared with dialysis, it is important to ensure that donated organs -- even those with less desirable characteristics -- are made available to patients, and not discarded, whenever possible.

To examine current practices related to organ discard across transplant centers, Sumit Mohan, MD, MPH, Corey Brennan, MPH (Columbia University Irving Medical Center), and their colleagues created a measure to assess 182 transplant centers' utilization practices of perceived high-risk kidneys from 2010 to 2016, and they attempted to understand how these practices are influenced by regional variations in organ supply and demand.

By developing and applying a "donor utilization index," the team found that characteristics associated with organ discard are not rare among deceased donor kidneys that are transplanted, which indicates that many centers commonly use at least some kidneys that might be perceived as less than ideal. The use of these organs varied widely across transplant centers, however, and differences were not fully explained by the size of waitlists or the regional availability of donor organs.

The researchers also found that when centers were more likely to accept less than ideal organs for transplantation, patients experienced shorter average wait times for deceased donor organs.

Journal Reference:

Corey Brennan, Syed Ali Husain, Kristen L. King, Demetra Tsapepas, Lloyd E. Ratner, Zhezhen Jin, Jesse D. Schold, Sumit Mohan. A Donor Utilization Index to Assess the Utilization and Discard of Deceased Donor Kidneys Perceived as High Risk. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 2019; CJN.02770319 DOI: 10.2215/CJN.02770319

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://recordinghacks.com/articles/how-to-build-a-microphone/

For decades condenser microphones have been the staple for high-quality recording and live sound assignments. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to own a good one. Well that's about to change. I've written this article so that anyone who wants a great condenser mic (or those who just want more of them) can have their wish.

For around $20 (US) anyone can build an extremely accurate, life-like condenser microphone. DO NOT let the cost fool you, this mic's frighteningly good performance will blow your mind — and it's easy to build! -Joel Cameron

This microphone is largely based on a posting I found on the internet showing how to modify Realistic (Radio Shack) PZMs for better performance. I have simply finished the design so people can build a complete mic from scratch. After making a pair of these, I was shocked to find out how amazing they sound. In fact, these little buggers have become my first choice for capturing unhyped, totally natural stereo images, beating-out pairs of choice small and large-diaphragm condensers, and some nice ribbons too!

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

On Wednesday, Microsoft and Alibaba Cloud revealed "an open standard for developing and operating applications on Kubernetes and other platforms," that isn't yet a standard and looks rather redundant in light of similar projects.

The Open Application Model (OAM), released as an open source project under the oversight of the Open Web Foundation, defines how to describe applications in a way that separates the concerns of developers – how the application is made – and operators – how the application is deployed.

For example, a developer implementing file storage might specify that data will get written to a file path but wouldn't need to be describe what the kind of storage volume that gets mounted or how that requirement gets fulfilled.

"Separating the application definition from the operational details of the cluster enables application developers to focus on the key elements of their application rather than the operational details of where it deploys," Microsoft explains in a blog post, noting that this separation of concerns allows code to be more modular, reusable, and reliable.

The OAM model covers components (discrete, runnable, described units), workload types (that a component can execute), traits (defining operations-specific features like auto-scaling), application scopes (boundaries representing groups of components), and an application configuration (describing component instances, traits, and scopes, in conjunction with configuration data).

Microsoft has also created an implementation of its specification, a project called Rudr, which sounds like it ought to be ride sharing app for boats but really is just a name chosen for its thematic association with Kubernetes (Greek for a ship's captain or pilot).

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

Gizmodo reports that Marc Teyssier and researchers at Telecom Paris in France have developed a home-reproducible touch and pressure sensitive artificial skin for phone cases.

It's called a Skin-On Interface (since the name "beefy pinchy skin chunk" undoubtedly triggered several legal red flags)—artificial skin that's been programmed to understand gestural and touch inputs in addition to particular emotions these interactions are tied to. A light tap lets your phone know you want its attention, clenching it in a tight grip reads as anger, while stroking it can register as comfort and certainly nothing else even remotely salacious.

cough

One of the potential uses listed in the proof of concept video for Skin-On above is "tactile communication with a virtual avatar."

A line of research that would certainly lead to various happy endings.

The next step for these abominations is the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in New Orleans, where the team of Telecom Paris, HCI Sorbonne University, and the French National Center for Scientific Research researchers will present their work.

Teyssier stated that he didn't start out with any particular final application in mind, but rather that the goal was "to propose a possible future with anthropomorphic devices."

Want to build your own just in time for Halloween?

More information: https://marcteyssier.com/projects/skin-on/
Open-Hardware part: https://muca-board.github.io

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for FatPhil

mjg59 | Letting Birds scooters fly free

Bird produce a range of rental scooters that are available in multiple markets. With the exception of the Bird Zero[1], all their scooters share a common control board described in FCC filings. The board contains three primary components - a Nordic NRF52 Bluetooth controller, an STM32 SoC and a Quectel EC21-V modem. The Bluetooth and modem are both attached to the STM32 over serial and have no direct control over the rest of the scooter. The STM32 is tied to the scooter's engine control unit and lights, and also receives input from the throttle (and, on some scooters, the brakes).

The pads labeled TP7-TP11 near the underside of the STM32 and the pads labeled TP1-TP5 near the underside of the NRF52 provide Serial Wire Debug, although confusingly the data and clock pins are the opposite way around between the STM and the NRF. Hooking this up via an STLink and using OpenOCD allows dumping of the firmware from both chips, which is where the fun begins. Running strings over the firmware from the STM32 revealed "Set mode to Free Drive Mode". Challenge accepted.

[...] In summary: Secrets that are stored on hardware that attackers can run arbitrary code on probably aren't secret, not having verified boot on safety critical components isn't ideal, devices should have meaningful cryptographic identity when authenticating against a remote endpoint.

Bird responded quickly to my reports, accepted my 90 day disclosure period and didn't threaten to sue me at any point in the process, so good work Bird.

[...] (Note: These issues were disclosed to Bird, and they tell me that fixes have rolled out. I haven't independently verified)

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

China gives Tesla green light for production - Roadshow

Tesla put a major piece in its manufacturing puzzle in China with government approval of automotive production locally. The US-based electric-car maker is now officially part of the approved list of automotive manufacturers in the world's largest auto market.

Reuters first reported on the news after viewing a copy of list the Chinese industry ministry produced. The granting gives Tesla the certification needed to start local production, though it's not clear when that will begin. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The factory will be the first full-scale manufacturing plant outside of the US. Tesla does operate a "final assembly" facility in Tilburg, Netherlands, but the Chinese site is a key pillar in expanding the automaker's footprint in the country. Tesla vehicles are currently subject to auto tariffs; local production will element those taxes. China has also granted the carmaker assistance to expedite construction.

Reuters also reported production at the new factory could kick off this month.

From the Reuters article:

Tesla intends to produce at least 1,000 Model 3s a week from the Shanghai factory by the end of this year, as it tries to boost sales in the world's biggest auto market and avoid higher import tariffs imposed on U.S. cars.

The factory, China's first fully foreign-owned car plant, also reflects Beijing's broader shift to open up its car market.

Shanghai authorities have offered Tesla assistance to speed up construction, and China excluded Tesla models from a 10% car purchase tax on Aug. 30.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Maiken Mikkelsen wants to change the world by developing a small, inexpensive hyperspectral camera to enable worldwide precision farming practices that would significantly reduce water, energy, fertilizer and pesticide use while simultaneously increasing yields. While that goal sounds like a tall task for a simple camera, it's one that has now been greenlighted by a 2019 Moore Inventor Fellowship.

"The Moore Inventor Fellowship is opening a new avenue of research to me," said Mikkelsen, the James N. and Elizabeth H. Barton Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. "It is enabling me to explore new applications for my technology that could benefit the environment and mankind in a profound way, and I am grateful that the Moore Foundation allows me to pursue those."

The cameras most people think of and use every day only capture visible light, which is a small fraction of the available spectrum. Other cameras might specialize in infrared or X-ray wavelengths, for example, but few can capture light from disparate points along the spectrum. And those that can suffer from a myriad of drawbacks, such as complicated machinery that can break, slow functional speeds, bulkiness that can make them difficult to transport, handle by hand or place on drones, and costs that range from tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mikkelsen, however, is working on an approach can be implemented on a single chip, can snap a multispectral image in a few trillionths of a second, and produced and sold for just tens of dollars.

"It wasn't obvious at all that we could do this," said Mikkelsen. "It's quite astonishing actually that not only does this work in preliminary experiments, but we're seeing new physical phenomena that we did not expect that will allow us to speed up how fast we can do this detection by many orders of magnitude."

The physical phenomenon behind Mikkelsen's technology is called plasmonics—the use of nanoscale physical phenomena to trap certain frequencies of light.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow9088

"BriansClub" Hack Rescues 26M Stolen Cards

Last month, KrebsOnSecurity was contacted by a source who shared a plain text file containing what was claimed to be the full database of cards for sale both currently and historically through BriansClub[.]at, a thriving fraud bazaar named after this author. Imitating my site, likeness and namesake, BriansClub even dubiously claims a copyright with a reference at the bottom of each page: “© 2019 Crabs on Security.”

Multiple people who reviewed the database shared by my source confirmed that the same credit card records also could be found in a more redacted form simply by searching the BriansClub Web site with a valid, properly-funded account.

All of the card data stolen from BriansClub was shared with multiple sources who work closely with financial institutions to identify and monitor or reissue cards that show up for sale in the cybercrime underground.

[...] An extensive analysis of the database indicates BriansClub holds approximately $414 million worth of stolen credit cards for sale, based on the pricing tiers listed on the site. That’s according to an analysis by Flashpoint, a security intelligence firm based in New York City.

Allison Nixon, the company’s director of security research, said the data suggests that between 2015 and August 2019, BriansClub sold roughly 9.1 million stolen credit cards, earning the site $126 million in sales (all sales are transacted in bitcoin).

[...] In a message titled “Your site is hacked,’ KrebsOnSecurity requested comment from BriansClub via the “Support Tickets” page on the carding shop’s site, informing its operators that all of their card data had been shared with the card-issuing banks.

I was surprised and delighted to receive a polite reply a few hours later from the site’s administrator (“admin”):

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Blue light has gotten a bad rap, getting blamed for loss of sleep and eye damage. Personal electronic devices emit more blue light than any other color. Blue light has a short wavelength, which means that it is high-energy and can damage the delicate tissues of the eye. It can also pass through the eye to the retina, the collection of neurons that converts light into the signals that are the foundation of sight.

Laboratory studies have shown that prolonged exposure to high-intensity blue light damages retinal cells in mice. But, epidemiological studies on real people tell a different story.

As an assistant professor at The Ohio State University College of Optometry, I teach and conduct vision research, including work with retinal eye cells. I also see patients in the college's teaching clinics. Often, my patients want to know how they can keep their eyes healthy despite looking at a computer screen all day. They often ask about "blue-blocking" spectacle lenses that they see advertised on the internet.

But when it comes to protecting your vision and keeping your eyes healthy, blue light isn't your biggest concern.

One way to think about blue light and potential retinal damage is to consider the Sun. Sunlight is mostly blue light. On a sunny afternoon, it's nearly 100,000 times brighter than your computer screen. Yet, few human studies have found any link between sunlight exposure and the development of age-related macular degeneration, a retinal disease that leads to loss of central vision.

If being outside on a sunny afternoon likely doesn't damage the human retina, then neither can your dim-by-comparison tablet. A theoretical study recently reached the same conclusion.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Overfishing is a major problem for the world's oceans, but a strategy adopted nearly 50 years ago has helped protect fisheries: giving nations exclusive rights to waters 200 miles offshore and letting them police their own fish stocks.

A study by UC Berkeley graduate student Gabriel Englander shows that the nations that reap the most value from fisheries within their exclusive economic zones (EEZs) are the most effective at keeping other nations out. These results, published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability, are the first to demonstrate that assigning property rights to countries leads to the protection of fisheries from unauthorized fishing.

EEZs were first established in the 1970s, giving nations authority over fish, oil and mineral resources in a huge chunk, some 39 percent, of the world's oceans. Before that, countries had authority only within three miles of land, leaving the bulk of marine resources free for exploitation.

Using newly available data, Englander found that unauthorized foreign fishing is 81 percent lower just inside EEZs compared to just outside them. Today, more than 95 percent of global marine fish catch occurs inside EEZs.

The results could have implications for preserving fisheries in the remainder of the ocean. The United Nations recently convened the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) to consider the creation of new marine protected areas on the high seas, which are remote and costly to police.

Original Submission