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upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for carny

This Ubuntu 19.10 Bug Shares Your Media Folders Without Warning

A major bug in Ubuntu 19.10 could be automatically sharing the contents of your Pictures, Video and Music folders with other users on the same network.

The problem is caused by Ubuntu’s new media sharing feature (powered [by] the Rygel media server) which is supposed to [be] disabled by default.

But scores of users running Ubuntu 19.10 in a non-GNOME Shell/Ubuntu session report that rygel autostarts on log in, with no warning or indication provided that it is running in the background.

As a result, the full contents of ~/Photos, ~/Videos and ~/Music folders are accessible on local area network, (LAN), i.e, available to anyone and anything else connected to the same Wi-Fi point.

And that’s not good if you live in a house with others, especially with a content discovery device like a smart tv or games console active at the same time you are.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

First, I debated whether to put this on stack exchange or here, but it seems like it is a tech question that suits this site fine.

Background
I have a room with a 115 V, 6000 BTU window AC unit plugged into one outlet. Then a bunch of electronics (~800 W measured) plugged into a 1500 VA, 900 W UPS plugged in to a second outlet across the room. Finally, I have two 50 W strands of Christmas lights in series (100 W total) I tried to plug into various outlets around the room.

Problem
The first problem is that whenever the room gets too hot, the compressor for the AC unit turns on and the Christmas lights will all flicker. This is not just an annoyance, because the first strand of lights I had in the room actually got burned out one by one, starting at the light closest to the wall outlet.

So I got another strand and was surprised to see the flickering happens even if they are plugged into the UPS (which does have an internal automatic voltage regulator). This made me concerned for the electronics plugged into the UPS, which includes a PC and monitors. However, I do not notice any flicker on the monitor when the compressor turns on. On the other hand, I have been getting some strange pc crashes lately (which would make some sense because only recently did it cool enough for the AC to not be running constantly) that may be related. This could also be due to installing a second gpu recently, etc though.

Questions
I have two main questions:

1) What is the best way to stop the flickering?
2) If the lights are flickering even when plugged into the UPS, should I also be concerned about the other electronics that are obviously also experiencing a momentary power reduction?

Some secondary questions:

3) Does it make sense to put another AVR between the UPS and the wall, eg something like this?

4) Is there something I can put between the AC unit and the wall to help?

5) This is a rental so I would prefer not to do any maintenance on the AC unit, but is this an issue you would report to the landlord?

Any ideas?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

White House warns Congress about Artemis funding

The White House warned Congress in a recent letter that without funding increases for its exploration programs, NASA won't be able to achieve the goal of landing humans on the moon in 2024.

The Oct. 23 letter from Russell Vought, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, addressed overall issues with appropriations bills that Shelby's committee had approved in recent weeks, including the Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS) bill that funds NASA.

"The Administration appreciates the Committee's continued support for space exploration, reflected in the $22.8 billion provided in the bill for NASA," Vought wrote in the letter, first reported by Ars Technica.

He took issue, though, with the funding provided for exploration research and development, which includes work on lunar landers and the lunar Gateway. "However, the $1.6 billion provided for exploration research and development (R&D) is insufficient to fully fund the lander system that astronauts would use to return to the Moon in 2024," he wrote. "Funding exploration R&D at the $2.3 billion level requested in the FY 2020 Budget is needed to support the Administration's goal of returning to the Moon by 2024."

From the Ars Technica article:

Congress has mandated that NASA use the more costly SLS[*] booster to launch the ambitious Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter in the early 2020s, while the White House prefers the agency to fly on a much-less-expensive commercial rocket. In a section discussing the Clipper mission, Vought's letter includes a cost estimate to build and fly a single SLS rocket in a given year—more than $2 billion—which NASA has not previously specified.

[*] SLS: Space Launch System.

At the U.S. Air Force Space Pitch Day on November 5, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk put a much smaller number on the cost of launching a fully reusable Starship:

"A single Starship will expend about $900,000 worth of fuel and oxygen for pressurization to send "at least 100 tons, probably 150 tons to orbit," Musk said. SpaceX's cost to operate Starship will be around $2 million per flight, which is "much less than even a tiny rocket," he added.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

This past weekend, archaeologists uncovered a pair of 15,000 year old artificial Mammoth Traps near Mexico City.

Early settlers of the Mexico Basin subdued giant mammoths by digging out deep, wide trenches and then driving the animals into the pits, according to a press release issued by Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Scientists with INAH worked at these pits for the past 10 months, pulling out over 800 mammoth bones, some of which exhibited signs of hunting and possibly ritualistic rearrangement.

Two mammoth pits, and possibly a third, were found at the Tultepec II site, which is around 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Mexico City.

According to INAH archaeologist and team leader Córdoba Barradas,

This is the first recorded use of pitfalls to capture mammoths—a strategy known to have been employed by African hunters to trap elephants, as described in a 2018 paper published in the science journal Quaternary

Barradas and his colleagues state that there is evidence the paleolithic site was in use for over 500 years and there is likely more to be uncovered in the area.

There is a particular mystery, he said, over why the haul only includes shoulder blades from the right side. "The left shoulder blades are missing – why?" he asked.

Bones from a camel and horse were also found at the site (these species later became extinct in the Americas.)

Also at The Guardian

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Brian Krebs summarizes a report about increased deaths due to Microsoft products, which have been implicated in several service outages at various hospitals. These outages have resulted in a measurable increase in fatality.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management took the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) list of healthcare data breaches and used it to drill down on data about patient mortality rates at more than 3,000 Medicare-certified hospitals, about 10 percent of which had experienced a data breach.

As PBS noted in its coverage of the Vanderbilt study, after data breaches as many as 36 additional deaths per 10,000 heart attacks occurred annually at the hundreds of hospitals examined.

The researchers found that for care centers that experienced a breach, it took an additional 2.7 minutes for suspected heart attack patients to receive an electrocardiogram.

Original Submission

RandomFactor writes:

According to the news-site Seattle P-I, a battle that started in the late Cretaceous period between a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Ceretopsian "entwined in a death match" has resulted in a more modern form of combat.

in 2005, in central Montana

amateur paleontologist Clayton Phipps discovered a 22-foot-long (7-meter-long) carnivorous theropod and a 28-foot-long (9-meter-long) plant-eating ceratopsian believed to have died 66 million years ago. Imprints of the dinosaurs' skin were found in the sediment.

When the Murrays went to sell the "dueling dinosaurs" for what they hoped would be at least $6 million, potential buyers wanted assurances they owned the fossils. The Murrays sought a court ruling.

And that's where the controversy began, winding back and forth through the courts since 2013

Mary Ann and Lige Murray own the surface rights and one-third of the mineral rights on the ranch near the tiny town of Jordan, while brothers Jerry and Robert Severson own two-thirds of the mineral rights after a 2005 property sale. Neither side expected to find fossils on the property, and they're not mentioned in the contract, court documents show.

Eric Wolff, an attorney for the Seversons, contends

that the fossils in this case are composed of minerals and are valuable and are therefore part of the mineral estate.

conversely, according to attorney Harlan Krogh,

"Montana has never recognized dinosaur fossils as a mineral" like it has oil, coal or gold, he said, adding that fossils are not mined, processed, milled or smelted.

Recent law in Montana clarified this situation when

lawmakers unanimously passed a measure that says dinosaur fossils are part of the surface estate unless there's a contract saying otherwise.

However the law does not apply to pre-existing litigation, so the battle rages on.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Scientists have for the first time seen how the MYC protein, which plays a central role in cancer, binds to a key protein and controls important functions in the cell. The study, published in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, is a collaboration between scientists at Linköping University, Sweden, and the Princess Margaret Cancer Center in Toronto, Canada. The new discovery may in the long term help in the development of new cancer drugs that disrupt the function of MYC in tumour cells.

The MYC protein regulates many important functions in healthy cells. But MYC is often extremely overactive in aggressive tumours, where its function can be likened to that of an accelerator pedal that has got stuck. The mechanisms by which MYC functions in the cell are largely unknown. The scientists who carried out the present study, therefore, wanted to find out how the transcription factor MYC interacts with another protein, the TATA-binding protein (abbreviated "TBP"). TBP acts as a starting button for the expression of many genes in the cell.

MYC, however, has proved to be elusive for structural biologists. It is what is known as a "disordered" protein, which constantly shifts between different structures in a very dynamic manner. MYC can bind to over 300 different proteins in the cell. The key to MYC being able to interact with so many other proteins so rapidly is probably its adaptability and its ability to change structure in a flash.

[...] The scientists have not been able to directly image the dynamic binding site that has the greater biological function at atomic resolution yet. For this reason, they combined data from different methods and carried out advanced calculations in a supercomputer to model the interaction between the two proteins. They used AI to home in on the structure that agrees best with the observed data and in this way identified a previously unknown binding site. The researchers believe that MYC helps to increase gene expression by making it easier to place TBP at the correct location on the DNA.

Journal: Yong Wei, Diana Resetca, Zhe Li, Isak Johansson-Åkhe, Alexandra Ahlner, Sara Helander, Amelie Wallenhammar, Vivian Morad, Brian Raught, Björn Wallner, Tetsuro Kokubo, Yufeng Tong, Linda Z. Penn, Maria Sunnerhagen. Multiple direct interactions of TBP with the MYC oncoprotein^[$]. Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41594-019-0321-z

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Sounds of mosquito mating rituals could lead to quieter drones: Research could also lead to nontoxic method using sound to diminish mosquito breeding

Their findings about the aerodynamics of mosquito wings could have implications for building quieter drones and for devising nontoxic methods to trap and exterminate the pests.

In a research paper published in Bioinspiration and Biomimetics, a team from the university's Whiting School of Engineering, Rajat Mittal, a mechanical engineering professor, and Jung-Hee Seo, an associate research professor, explain the aerodynamics and acoustics of the mosquito mating ritual through computer modeling.

"The same wings that are producing sound are also essential for them to fly," said Mittal, an expert in computational fluid dynamics. "They somehow have to do both at the same time. And they're effective at it. That's why we have so much malaria and other mosquito borne diseases."

His team's research shows that "everything about mosquitoes seems perfectly adapted for accomplishing this sound-based communication."

"Thus," the paper states, "understanding the strategies and adaptations employed by insects such as mosquitoes to control their aeroacoustic noise could eventually provide insights into the development of quiet drones and other bioinspired micro-aerial vehicles."

In addition to devising quieter rotors for drones, Mittal said the findings will likely inform research into how sound can be used to interrupt the mating ritual. That could result in non-toxic methods to disrupt breeding and diminish mosquito populations.

Journal Reference:

Jung-Hee Seo, Tyson L Hedrick, Rajat Mittal. Mechanism and scaling of wing tone generation in mosquitoes^[$]. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2019; DOI: 10.1088/1748-3190/ab54fc

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for soylent_red

TrendMicro Employee Sold Customer Info to Tech Support Scammers

TrendMicro has an announced a security incident where an employee was stealing consumer customer information and selling it to a third-party to use in tech support scams.

In August 2019, TrendMicro learned that some of their customers running home security solutions were receiving tech support scam phone calls that impersonated TrendMicro tech support agents.

The scammers utilized information in these calls that led TrendMicro to believe that this was more than a random phone call and that it could have been an insider threat.

"The information that the criminals reportedly possessed in these scam calls led us to suspect a coordinated attack. "

After conducting an investigation, it was determined in October that these phone calls were caused by a TrendMicro employee performing unauthorized access to a customer support database, stealing consumer customer information, and selling it to third-party tech support scammers.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

In U.S. First, Scientists Safely Edit Cancer Patients' Cells With CRISPR

On Wednesday, U.S. scientists announced that they used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to modify the cells of cancer patients — a first in the United States — and that so far, the technique appears to be safe. It's too early to tell whether the edited cells will help patients live longer, but researchers think the approach looks promising and is an important first step for using CRISPR against other diseases.

There's an incredible amount of optimism around using CRISPR to treat or possibly cure a wide range of genetic disorders and cancers by snipping out detrimental strands of DNA from cells. The technology has drawn the attention of high-profile investors, including billionaire Sean Parker, co-founder of Napster and an early investor in Facebook, who helped fund the study. The idea is that CRISPR could eliminate disease at its source, rather than just alleviating symptoms, as the vast majority of pharmaceuticals on the market do. But CRISPR is a relatively new tool, and it is unclear how safe it is for human treatment. While experiments in animal subjects have looked promising, this new research gives scientists the first glimpse of how CRISPR will perform in people.

So far three cancer patients in the United States have received the experimental CRISPR treatment, which involved extracting certain immune cells — called T cells — from the blood, editing them in the lab, and infusing them back into the body. T cells are the body's natural mechanism for fighting infections and other foreign invaders, including tumors. But the reason cancer can persist in the body is because it can hide from the immune system, going undetected by these T cells. In this trailblazing study, the first proposed use of CRISPR in humans, researchers used CRISPR to supercharge patients' T cells by removing three genes that interfere with the immune cells' ability to bind to cancer cells and kill them.

Plans for this study were first reported in 2016 when an advisory group at the U.S. National Institutes of Health gave researchers at the University of Pennsylvania the green light. The first two patients were treated this April, and ultimately the study is slated to include 18 total patients with multiple myeloma, sarcoma, or melanoma whose cancers have relapsed or not responded to traditional cancer treatments, like chemotherapy or radiation.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1337

AI will now watch for fraudsters on the world's largest stock exchange

The Nasdaq stock market is an attractive target for fraudsters. As the world's largest stock exchange by volume, it must be constantly monitored for attempts to illicitly beat the system. These can include manipulations to inflate a stock's closing price; churning (rapidly buying and selling stocks) to give the false impression of a lot of activity; and spoofing (placing a large buy or sell order with no intention of actually executing) to create artificially high demand.

That monitoring is now being aided by artificial intelligence, Nasdaq, the stock market's parent company, announced today. A new deep-learning system is working in tandem with human analysts to keep watch over roughly 17.5 million trades per day.

The system augments an existing software surveillance system that uses statistics and rules to flag any signs of market abuse. In the US equity market, for example, the old system issued around 1,000 alerts per day for human analysts to investigate, says Martina Rejsjo, the head of market surveillance for Nasdaq's North America equities. Only a fraction of these cases would subsequently be confirmed as fraud and result in heavy fines.

The new system should have a number of advantages. First, Nasdaq claims it will be more accurate at identifying patterns of abuse, reducing the burden on human analysts. Second, it will be better at detecting more complex patterns of abuse, particularly spoofing, which Nasdaq believes will become increasingly common.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Could the world cope if GPS stopped working?

What would happen if GPS - the Global Positioning System - stopped working?

For a start, we would all have to engage our brains and pay attention to the world around us when getting from A to B. Perhaps this would be no bad thing: we'd be less likely to drive into rivers or over cliffs through misplaced trust in our navigation devices.

Pick your own favourite story about the kind of idiocy only GPS can enable. Mine is the Swedish couple who misspelled the Italian island of Capri and turned up hundreds of miles away in Carpi, asking where the sea was.

But these are the exceptions.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have found that current forecasts call for the U.S. electric power sector to meet the 2020 and 2025 CO₂ reduction requirements in the Paris Agreement—even though the U.S. has announced its withdrawal—and also meet the 2030 CO₂ reduction requirements contemplated by the Clean Power Plan—even though it has been repealed.

Despite the absence of a national policy aimed at reducing CO₂ emissions, the U.S. is ahead of schedule to meet the short-term and mid-term goals of both the Paris Agreement and the Clean Power Plan, according to a recent viewpoint article published in Environmental Science & Technology.

"A year ago, it looked like our ability to meet these larger carbon reduction targets would have required more proactive steps, such as new regulation or new incentive programs," said Jeffrey Anderson, lead author of the paper and Ph.D. candidate of Engineering & Public Policy (EPP). "However, as renewable energy costs have fallen and are projected to continue decreasing even further, we are now well on the path to achieving even the 2030 goals in the Clean Power Plan."

Based on an analysis of projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, these carbon reductions will be met without any additional legislative or regulatory activity, said David Rode, faculty of CMU's Electricity Industry Center. The team also included EPP professors Haibo Zhai and Paul Fischbeck, also a professor of Social & Decision Sciences.

Original Submission

martyb writes:

The observant among you may have noticed I'd been posting fewer stories recently.

On October 27th I went to the hospital. After a physical examination, CT scan, and MRI, it was determined that I had had a minor stroke. I had mild loss of use of the pinky and ring finger of my left hand as well as some loss of fine motor control in my left arm and leg. A couple days later saw me in the operating room with a stent being inserted in my right carotid artery. I was released on Halloween day for a few days' recuperation at a relative's home and am now cleared to go back to work. I'm starting easy with slightly shortened work days, as I lack the stamina I had before.

Still, as these things go, I can't help but think of how fortunate I am. Nothing internal seems to have been affected (heart, lungs, etc. all working fine.) I am right-handed, so no problems there. No problem with talking or swallowing, so that's a huge plus. Thanks to neural plasticity and prescribed exercises, I have already mostly recovered. The lack of stamina manifests as my just being too tired after a day at work to be able to do much in the way of posting stories out to the site. As for my mind, I can attest that I am still as tarp as a shack! =)

As much as I would like to think I'll just bounce back to normal in no time, I acknowledge that my activities here will be at a somewhat diminished capacity for a while; time will tell.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Uber lost another $1.1 billion in the third quarter of 2019, the company announced on Monday. This wasn't a surprise: Uber lost about the same amount in the first quarter of 2019 and lost even more last quarter.

Yet the company argues that things aren't as bad as that headline figure suggests. To show why, Uber broke its earnings down by business area, distinguishing its core "rides" app from Uber Eats, Uber Freight, and other operations.

Uber says that, if you exclude certain non-operating expenses—mainly interest, depreciation, and stock-based compensation—the "rides" app actually earned a substantial $631 million profit. That's enough to cover the company's core operating expenses, the company said. But Uber's profitability was dragged down by losses in its other businesses—mainly a $316 million loss from Uber Eats.

Of course, interest, depreciation, and stock-based compensation are real costs. So the fact that Uber looks less unprofitable excluding them isn't going to be particularly reassuring to Uber investors.

But the reason these numbers could ultimately be good news for investors is that they suggest Uber's core rides business might not be perpetually money-losing. If the "EBIDTA" profitability of the ride-hailing business continues to improve—it grew from $416 million in the year-ago quarter to $631 million last quarter on an EBITDA basis—the company could eventually reach honest-to-goodness profitability.

Original Submission