SoylentNews

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for SoyCow1337.

Twitter says it may warn users about deepfakes—but won't remove them:

The news: Twitter has drafted a deepfake policy that would warn users about synthetic or manipulated media, but not remove it. Specifically, it says it would place a notice next to tweets that contain deepfakes, warn people before they share or like tweets that include deepfakes, or add a link to a news story or Twitter Moment explaining that it isn't real. Twitter has said it may remove deepfakes that could threaten someone's physical safety or lead to serious harm. People have until November 27 to give Twitter feedback on the proposals.

[...]A real threat?:The most notorious political deepfakes so far either have not been deepfakes (see the Nancy Pelosi video released in May) or have been created by people warning about deepfakes, rather than any bad actors themselves.

[...] The real problem: There is no denying that deepfakes pose a significant new threat. But so far, they're mostly a threat to women, particularly famous actors and musicians. A recent report found that 96% of deepfakes are porn, virtually always created without the consent of the person depicted. These would already break Twitter's existing rules and be removed.

Original Submission

Tesla Cybertruck

hemocyanin writes:

Tesla unveiled the Cybertruck. Apparently, many people think it's ugly. I absolutely love it. It took the jellybean esthetic of modern vehicles and ran it over. Twice. There's simply no point in saying anything about this truck -- you have to look at the pictures:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/22/20976539/tesla-cybertruck-test-drive-electric-truck-pickup-video-features-price-elon-musk

In order to make this TFS less short, a few specs, but really, they don't matter until you see if it appeals to you which it either will or won't in spades. The low end 250 mile range version is supposed to be about $40k. The body is unpainted cold rolled stainless steel. Upmodels will have a towing capacity variously described as 10-14k pounds and at the top end, a 500 mile range. They'll cost a lot more.

"Bulletproof" Musk Cybertruck fail

barbara hudson writes:

Elon Musk bragged that his "cybertruck" was bulletproof to a 9mm round, but two separate attempts to demonstrate just how tough it is failed when ball bearings thrown by hand literally caused the windows to come crashing down in pieces. So much for safety glass; even on cyber trucks, windows sucks.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/22/cybertruck-tesla-unveils-the-pickup-truck-we-have-to-have

We created an exoskeleton," Musk said to rapturous whoops from those attending the Los Angeles launch. "It is literally bulletproof to a 9mm handgun."

Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's chief designer, asked Musk if he could lob a metal ball at the window of the vehicle. "Really?" said Musk. The window smashed. "Oh my fucking God," said Musk. "Maybe that was a little hard."

Showing confidence in the vehicle, Von Holzhausen then suggested he should lob it at a second window. "Try that one? Really?" asked Musk moments before the rear window was also smashed. "It didn't go through, that's the plus side," a stunned Musk said.

Also at Ars Technica and Wccftech.

See also: Hot takes as opinion cools on Tesla Cybertruck
Tesla trademarked Cybertruck and 'Cybrtrk' ahead of its planned debut

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

martyb writes:

US warships sail in disputed South China Sea amid tensions

Navy warships have sailed near islands claimed by China in the disputed South China Sea twice in the past few days, the United States military told Reuters on Thursday, at a time of tension between the world's two largest economies.

The busy waterway is one of a number of flashpoints in the US-China relationship, which include a trade war, US sanctions, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Earlier this week during high-level talks, China called on the US military to stop flexing its muscles in the South China Sea and adding "new uncertainties" over democratic Taiwan, which is seen as a wayward province and claimed by China.

[...] On Wednesday, the littoral combat ship Gabrielle Giffords travelled within 12 nautical miles of Mischief Reef[*], Commander Reann Mommsen, a spokeswoman for the US Navy's Seventh Fleet, told Reuters.

On Thursday, the destroyer Wayne E. Meyer challenged restrictions on innocent passage in the Paracel islands[**], Mommsen said.

"These missions are based in the rule of law and demonstrate our commitment to upholding the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all nations," she added.

[...] China claims almost all the energy-rich waters of the South China Sea, where it has established military outposts on artificial islands.

However, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the sea.

The United States accuses China of militarising the South China Sea and trying to intimidate Asian neighbours who might want to exploit its extensive oil and gas reserves.

[*] Mischief Reef
[**] Paracel Islands

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Nearly three-quarters of all clinically relevant antibiotics are natural substances, produced by bacteria. However, the antibiotics that are currently available are losing their effectiveness and increasing numbers of pathogens are becoming resistant. This means there is an urgent need for new antibiotics, but at present fewer than one per cent of known species of bacteria are available for the search for active substances. The remaining 99 per cent are considered ,impossible to cultivate' and are therefore hardly studied.

In addition, the ability to produce antibiotics is not evenly distributed among bacteria. "Talented producers are primarily microorganisms with complex lifestyles, an unusual cell biology and large genomes," explains microbiologist Christian Jogler of Friedrich Schiller University, Jena. "Such organisms produce antibiotic compounds and deploy them in the fight against other bacteria for nutrients and habitats," he adds. Anywhere that such microbiological battles over resources take place and nutrients are scarce is a promising place to search for potential producers of antibiotics.

That is exactly what Jogler and his team have done. With the help of diving robots and scientific divers, they looked for Planctomycetes in a total of 10 marine locations. "We know that Planctomycetes live in communities with other microorganisms and compete with them for habitat and nutrients," says Jogler, explaining what makes this group of bacteria of interest to the researchers.

With samples from the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea, as well as the Atlantic, the Pacific and the Arctic Ocean, the scientists succeeded in creating pure cultures of 79 new Planctomycetes. "These pure cultures together represent 31 new genera and 65 new species," adds lead author Dr Sandra Wiegand.

Journal Reference:

Sandra Wiegand, Mareike Jogler, Christian Boedeker, Daniela Pinto, John Vollmers, Elena Rivas-Marín, Timo Kohn, Stijn H. Peeters, Anja Heuer, Patrick Rast, Sonja Oberbeckmann, Boyke Bunk, Olga Jeske, Anke Meyerdierks, Julia E. Storesund, Nicolai Kallscheuer, Sebastian Lücker, Olga M. Lage, Thomas Pohl, Broder J. Merkel, Peter Hornburger, Ralph-Walter Müller, Franz Brümmer, Matthias Labrenz, Alfred M. Spormann, Huub J. M. Op den Camp, Jörg Overmann, Rudolf Amann, Mike S. M. Jetten, Thorsten Mascher, Marnix H. Medema, Damien P. Devos, Anne-Kristin Kaster, Lise Øvreås, Manfred Rohde, Michael Y. Galperin, Christian Jogler. Cultivation and functional characterization of 79 planctomycetes uncovers their unique biology. Nature Microbiology, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-019-0588-1

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956_

More than 1000 women win landmark court case against Johnson & Johnson over over vaginal mesh dangers

More than 1,350 Australian women won a seven-year-old class action lawsuit on Thursday against Johnson & Johnson (J&J) for misleading patients and surgeons about the risks of the pharmaceutical giant's pelvic mesh implants.

The suit is one of many J&J has faced in the United States, Canada and Europe over the implants, used to treat urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, in which organs shift from normal positions. J&J in October agreed to pay nearly $117m (£91m) to resolve claims in 41 US states and the District of Columbia.

Australia's Federal Court found that J&J subsidiary Ethicon had sold the devices without warning women about the "gravity of the risks", and was negligent in rushing the products to market before proper testing.

The judge in the case, Anna Katzmann, has set February for the next hearing in the case, where damages will be discussed.

Ethicon said it was reviewing the court's decision and would consider its options to appeal.

"Ethicon believes that the company acted ethically and responsibly in the research, development and supply of these products," the company said in a statement.

[...]

Julie Davis, the original claimant in the case, said she was "incredibly pleased" with the judgment but said it would not take away the pain and damage done to women.

"They have treated women essentially like guinea pigs, lied about it and done nothing to help," she told reporters at a televised media conference outside the court in Sydney.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

They are reminiscent of the "tractor beam" in Star Trek: special light beams can be used to manipulate molecules or small biological particles. Even viruses or cells can be captured or moved. However, these optical tweezers only work with objects in empty space or in transparent liquids. Any disturbing environment would deflect the light waves and destroy the effect. This is a problem, in particular with biological samples because they are usually embedded in a very complex environment.

[...] "However, this scattering effect can be compensated," says Michael Horodynski, first author of the paper. "We can calculate how the wave has to be shaped initially so that the irregularities of the disordered environment transform it exactly into the shape we want it to be. In this case, the light wave looks rather disordered and chaotic at first, but the disordered environment turns it into something ordered. Countless small disturbances, which would normally render the experiment impossible, are used to generate exactly the desired wave form, which then acts on a specific particle.

To achieve this, the particle and its disordered environment are first illuminated with various waves and the way in which the waves are reflected is measured. This measurement is carried out twice in quick succession. "Let's assume that in the short time between the two measurements, the disordered environment remains the same, while the particle we want to manipulate changes slightly," says Stefan Rotter. "Let's think of a cell that moves, or simply sinks downwards a little bit. Then the light wave we send in is reflected a little bit differently in the two measurements." This tiny difference is crucial: With the new calculation method developed at TU Wien, it is possible to calculate the wave that has to be used to amplify or attenuate this particle movement.

Journal Reference:

Michael Horodynski, Matthias Kühmayer, Andre Brandstötter, Kevin Pichler, Yan V. Fyodorov, Ulrich Kuhl, Stefan Rotter. Optimal wave fields for micromanipulation in complex scattering environments^[$]. Nature Photonics, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41566-019-0550-z

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Forty years ago, a Voyager spacecraft snapped the first closeup images of Europa, one of Jupiter's 79 moons. These revealed brownish cracks slicing the moon's icy surface, which give Europa the look of a veiny eyeball. Missions to the outer solar system in the decades since have amassed enough additional information about Europa to make it a high-priority target of investigation in NASA's search for life.

What makes this moon so alluring is the possibility that it may possess all of the ingredients necessary for life. Scientists have evidence that one of these ingredients, liquid water, is present under the icy surface and may sometimes erupt into space in huge geysers. But no one has been able to confirm the presence of water in these plumes by directly measuring the water molecule itself. Now, an international research team led out of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has detected the water vapor for the first time above Europa's surface. The team measured the vapor by peering at Europa through W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, one of the world's biggest telescopes.

[...] In a study published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, [NASA planetary scientist Lucas] Paganini and his team reported that they detected enough water releasing from Europa (5,202 pounds, or 2,360 kilograms, per second) to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool within minutes. Yet, the scientists also found that the water appears infrequently, at least in amounts large enough to detect from Earth, said Paganini: "For me, the interesting thing about this work is not only the first direct detection of water above Europa, but also the lack thereof within the limits of our detection method."

Indeed, Paganini's team detected the faint yet distinct signal of water vapor just once throughout 17 nights of observations between 2016 and 2017. Looking at the moon from Keck Observatory, the scientists saw water molecules at Europa's leading hemisphere, or the side of the moon that's always facing in the direction of the moon's orbit around Jupiter. (Europa, like Earth's moon, is gravitationally locked to its host planet, so the leading hemisphere always faces the direction of the orbit, while the trailing hemisphere always faces in the opposite direction.)

They used Keck Observatory's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSPEC), which measures the chemical composition of planetary atmospheres through the infrared light they emit or absorb. Molecules such as water emit specific frequencies of infrared light as they interact with solar radiation.

More information: L. Paganini et al. A measurement of water vapour amid a largely quiescent environment on Europa^[$], Nature Astronomy (2019). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-019-0933-6

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Multiple myeloma is a type of blood cancer in which malignant plasma cells, a type of white blood cell, accumulate in the bone marrow. This leads to bone destruction and failure of the marrow, which in healthy individuals, produce all the body's red blood cells.

[...] Recent studies have shown some myeloma cells can leave the bone marrow and enter the blood stream. The presence of these cells, known as clonal circulating plasma cells, or cCPCs, in the blood has been correlated with shorter survival times.

Until now, it has been difficult to detect cCPCs in the blood. Existing methods cannot always detect the low levels of these cells in MM patients. In this week's issue of Biomicrofluidics, investigators report the development of a new device that can detect and isolate cCPCs from small samples of blood.

The device is a type of filter that separates malignant plasma cells from normal ones. It is based on a concept known as microfluidics. The filtering action is due to tiny pillars in the flow channel, designed in a precise way that allows normal blood cells through the filter while capturing the cancerous cCPCs.

More information: "Mechanical segregation and capturing of clonal circulating plasma cells in multiple myeloma using micropillar-integrated microfluidic device," Biomicrofluidics (2019). DOI: 10.1063/1.5112050

Original Submission

martyb writes:

Link between inflammation and mental sluggishness shown in new study

An estimated 12M UK citizens have a chronic medical condition, and many of them report severe mental fatigue that they characterize as ‘sluggishness’ or ‘brain fog’. This condition is often as debilitating as the disease itself.

A team in the University’s Centre for Human Brain Health investigated the link between this mental fog and inflammation – the body’s response to illness. In a study published in Neuroimage^[$], they show that inflammation appears to have a particular negative impact on the brain’s readiness to reach and maintain an alert state.

Dr Ali Mazaheri and Professor Jane Raymond of the University’s Centre for Human Brain Health, are the senior authors of the study. Dr Mazaheri says: “Scientists have long suspected a link between inflammation and cognition, but it is very difficult to be clear about the cause and effect. For example, people living with a medical condition or being very overweight might complain of cognitive impairment, but it’s hard to tell if that’s due to the inflammation associated with these conditions or if there are other reasons.”

“Our research has identified a specific critical process within the brain that is clearly affected when inflammation is present.”

The study focussed specifically on an area of the brain which is responsible for visual attention. A group of 20 young male volunteers took part and received a salmonella typhoid vaccine that causes temporary inflammation but has few other side effects. They were tested for cognitive responses to simple images on a computer screen a few hours after the injection so that their ability to control attention could be measured. Brain activity was measured while they performed the attention tests.

On a different day, either before or after, they received an injection with water (a placebo) and did the same attention tests. On each test day they were unaware of which injection they had received. Their inflammation state was measured by analysing blood taken on each day.

The tests used in the study assessed three separate attention processes, each involving distinct parts of the brain. These processes are: “alerting” which involves reaching and maintaining an alert state; “orienting” which involves selecting and prioritising useful sensory information; and “executive control” used to resolving what to pay attention to when available information is conflicting.

The results showed that inflammation specifically affected brain activity related to staying alert, while the other attention processes appeared unaffected by inflammation.

Journal Reference:
Leonie JT. Balter, Jos A. Bosch, Sarah Aldred, Mark T. Drayson, Jet JCS. Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Suzanne Higgs, Jane E. Raymond, Ali Mazaheri. Selective effects of acute low-grade inflammation on human visual attention^[$]. NeuroImage, 2019; 202: 116098 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116098

Original Submission

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for Runaway1956_.

Report: Sacklers using fake doctors, false marketing to sell OxyContin in China

The mega-rich family behind the OxyContin-maker Purdue Pharma is back to selling its highly addictive pain-killer with underhanded tactics and deceptive advertising—this time in China, via its international company, Mundipharma. That’s all according to a searing new investigation by the Associated Press.

The Sackler family, which owns both Purdue and Mundipharma, is embroiled in litigation in the United States over its alleged role in sparking the country’s epidemic of opioid abuse and overdoses. Thousands of plaintiffs—many state and local governments—claim that Purdue and the Sacklers misled patients, doctors, and regulators on the addictiveness of their drugs, aggressively marketed them, and wooed doctors into over-prescribing them.

While Purdue has since declared bankruptcy and stopped promoting OxyContin in the US, the Sacklers seem to be employing the same practices in China.

Based on documents and interviews with multiple Mundipharma representatives in China, the AP investigation found that reps were at times posing as doctors, providing debunked information that its long-acting opioids are safe and less addictive, and even illegally copying private medical records of patients to inform sales tactics.

[...]Mundipharma, meanwhile, is still hiring in China.

The AP story linked above is in-depth and well worth reading. See also: HuffPost.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The board of TSB[*] has been accused of a lack of "common sense" in the run-up to IT failures that left up to 1.9 million customers unable to bank online, some for several weeks, in April 2018.

An independent report into the incident by law firm Slaughter and May blamed both TSB and IT provider Sabis.

Customers were moved on to a new system, but the report said it had not been tested properly before going live.

[...]"We have concluded that the new platform was not ready to support TSB's full customer base and Sabis was not ready to operate the new platform," the report said.

"While the TSB board asked a number of pertinent questions... there were certain additional common sense challenges that the TSB board did not put to the executive.

"These included why it was reasonable to expect that TSB would be 'migration ready' only four months later than originally planned, when certain workstreams were as much as seven months behind schedule."

The report also said that there were more than 2,000 defects relating to testing at the time the system went live, but the board were only told about 800.

Other failings by TSB that it identified included setting "unnecessary" time constraints, which did not understand the complexity of the project, and being dishonest about the reasons for delays.

TSB is part of the Spanish banking group Sabadell and its in-house IT provider Sabis built the system.

The IT failure has cost TSB a total of £330m for customer compensation, fraud losses and other expenses.

[...]The Slaughter and May report was commissioned by TSB. Another joint report by two regulators, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Bank of England's Prudential Regulation Authority, will be published at a later date. Those regulators have the power to fine and reprimand businesses and individuals.

[*] TSB - Originally "Trustee Savings Bank"; see the entry on Wikipedia.

-- submitted from IRC

Original Submission

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

Bad news: 'Unblockable' web trackers emerge. Good news: Firefox with uBlock Origin can stop it. Chrome, not so much

Developers working on open-source ad-blocker uBlock Origin have uncovered a mechanism for tracking web browsers around the internet that defies today's blocking techniques.

A method to block this so-called unblockable tracker has been developed by the team, though it only works in Firefox, leaving Chrome and possibly other browsers susceptible. This fix is now available to uBlock Origin users.

[...]Here's where it all began: in a GitHub issue earlier this month, a developer who goes by the name Aeris online, said that French newspaper website liberation.fr uses a tracker crafted by French marketing analytics outfit Eulerian "that seems to be unblockable."

What makes it so is that the domain referenced appears to be a first-party page element – associated with the website publisher's domain – rather than a third-party page element – associated with a domain other than the visited website.

[...]In a conversation with The Register, Aeris said Criteo, an ad retargeting biz, appears to have deployed the technique to their customers recently, which suggests it will become more pervasive. Aeris added that DNS delegation clearly violates Europe's GDPR, which "clearly states that 'user-centric tracking' requires consent, especially in the case of a third-party service usage."

[...]"This exploit has been around for a long time, but is particularly useful now because if you can pretend to be a first-party cookie, then you avoid getting blocked by ad blockers, and the major browsers – Chrome, Safari, and Firefox," said Augustine Fou, a cybersecurity and ad fraud researcher who advises companies about online marketing, in an email to The Register.

"This is an exploit, not an 'oopsies,' because it is a hidden and deliberate action to make a third-party cookie appear to be first-party to skirt privacy regulations and consumer choice. This is yet another example of the 'badtech industrial complex' protecting its river of gold."

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for Runaway1956_.

Court says police can’t force suspects to turn over passwords:

The highest court in Pennsylvania has ruled that the state’s law enforcement cannot force suspects to turn over their passwords that would unlock their devices.

The state’s Supreme Court said compelling a password from a suspect is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, a constitutional protection that protects suspects from self-incrimination.

It’s not an surprising ruling, given other state and federal courts have almost always come to the same conclusion. The Fifth Amendment grants anyone in the U.S. the right to remain silent, which includes the right to not turn over information that could incriminate them in a crime. These days, those protections extend to the passcodes that only a device owner knows.

But the ruling is not expected to affect the ability by police to force suspects to use their biometrics — like their face or fingerprints — to unlock their phone or computer.

Because your passcode is stored in your head and your biometrics are not, prosecutors have long argued that police can compel a suspect into unlocking a device with their biometrics, which they say are not constitutionally protected. The court also did not address biometrics. In a footnote of the ruling, the court said it “need not address” the issue, blaming the U.S. Supreme Court for creating “the dichotomy between physical and mental communication.”

Peter Goldberger, president of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, who presented the arguments before the court, said it was “fundamental” that suspects have the right to “to avoid self-incrimination.”

Original Submission

NotSanguine writes:

The New York Times is reporting on the background and pending charges against the owner of MyPayrollHR, a payroll processing firm who absconded with $26 million in funds earmarked for direct deposit to ~250,000 employees of ~4,000 companies.

From the article:

Nicole Ingram was at the supermarket when she got a confusing text. Her payroll check for working as a nursing assistant in New Jersey, which had been deposited into her account, was being withdrawn.

On that morning in September, thousands of workers across the country received a similar notification. In all, tens of millions of dollars in direct deposit payments suddenly disappeared.

The paychecks were supposed to have been electronically routed through an upstate New York payroll management company, MyPayrollHR.

Ordinarily, MyPayrollHR would transfer the funds to a corporate middleman, Cachet Financial Services, which would then distribute the direct deposits to employees nationwide.

But days before, according to federal authorities, Michael Mann, the president of MyPayrollHR, redirected those payroll funds — $26 million in total, according to a separate lawsuit — into his own personal accounts.

[...] When Cachet realized it had allocated funds that didn't exist, the company reversed the transactions, taking back money from thousands of workers. One worker in Tennessee had an account overdraft by nearly $1 million.

The shocking development helped uncover a gigantic fraud operation and showed the lack of oversight in the payroll industry.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

With the end of support for Windows 7 coming in January, many users are looking to update to Windows 10 to continue getting security updates and support from Microsoft. According to a Tuesday report from security firm Trustwave, attackers are well aware of this and are targeting Microsoft users with fake Windows update emails that will infect computers with ransomware -- an especially sinister type of malware that locks up valuable data on your computer, and demands that you pay a ransom to release it or your data will be destroyed.

The spammers are sending some Windows users emails with subject lines "Install Latest Microsoft Windows Update now!" or "Critical Microsoft Windows Update!" The emails, which claim to be from Microsoft, include one sentence in the message body, which starts with two capital letters, Trustwave found. They ask recipients to click an attachment to download the "latest critical update."

The attachment has a .jpg file extension, but is actually a malicious .NET downloader, which will deliver malware to your machine. The ransomware, called bitcoingenerator.exe, encrypts the recipient's files, and leaves a ransom note titled "Cyborg_DECRYPT.txt" on their desktop, asking for $500 in bitcoin to unlock the files.

[...] "This is a very common type of phishing attack -- where the attacker tries to convince the target to open a malicious attachment," Karl Sigler, threat intelligence manager of Trustwave SpiderLabs, said in an email. "Windows users should understand that Microsoft will never send patches via email, but rather use their internal update utility embedded in every current Windows operating system. Users should always be wary of any unsolicited emails, especially those that present urgency to open attachments or click on links."

Original Submission