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Judge blocks NYC's law limiting Uber drivers 'cruising' for new passengers:

New York City's law to limit the amount of time Uber and Lyft drivers can spend cruising for passengers in busy parts of the city is "arbitrary and capricious," a New York State Supreme Court judge ruled Monday.

Last summer, the city's Taxi and Limousine passed rules requiring drivers reduce so-called deadheading — or the amount of time spent without passengers in the car — from 41 percent to 31 percent in Manhattan below 96th Street. The city said it was trying to reduce traffic congestion, which has risen in the years since ride-hailing took off. Uber sued to overturn the law, arguing it threatened driver pay and flexibility.

In his ruling, Judge Lyle E. Frank took issue with the city's definition of "cruising." He said there was "no rational basis" to calculate the time drivers spend looking for new passengers as part of the definition. And there was "scant rationale" for the city's choice of 31 percent as the target for deadheading. Frank annulled the rule, which would have gone into effect starting in February.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

DJI patents an off-road rover with a stabilized camera on top – TechCrunch:

DJI is easily the leading brand when it comes to camera drones, but few companies have even attempted a ground-based mobile camera platform. The company may be moving in that direction, though, if this patent for a small off-road vehicle with a stabilized camera is any indication.

The Chinese patent, first noted by DroneDJ, shows a rather serious-looking vehicle platform with chunky tires and a stabilized camera gimbal. As you can see in the image above, the camera mount is protected against shock by springs and pneumatics, which would no doubt react actively to sudden movements.

The image is no simple sketch like those you sometimes see of notional products and “just in case” patents — this looks like a fleshed-out mechanical drawing of a real device. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s coming to market at all, let alone any time soon. But it does suggest that DJI’s engineers have dedicated real time and effort to making this thing a reality.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

New Gene-Edited Tomatoes Can Now Be Grown In Grape-Like Bouquets:

Tomatoes are a tough fruit to cultivate at times. Grown from long vines, they are not well suited for cramped spaces but thanks to a new gene-edited strain of tomatoes, the popular fruit can now be grown from a bush, making them much more amenable to urban farming.

Researchers have used CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing to create a new strain of tomatoes that grow from bushes rather than vines, taking the often difficult-to-cultivate fruit and making it much more amenable to urban farming.

In a newly-published study in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Zarchary[sic] Lippman -- a plant biologist at New York State's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- and his colleagues describe the process used to create the new strain.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Today in Christmas miracles: a failed electric scooter company is getting bailed out:

It's a Christmas micromobility miracle!

Failed scooter business Unicorn is getting bailed out by rival company Unagi, after Unicorn had to shut down recently without any money leftover for refunds. David Hyman, CEO of Unagi, told The Verge that he can offer a $1,000 Unagi electric scooter to any of the 350 people who bought Unicorn scooters. Nick Evans, CEO of Unicorn and co-creator of gadget tracker Tile, confirmed the deal, and said he will offer refunds to anyone who doesn't want the Unagi scooter and just wants their money back.

"We put together a creative solution," Evans said. "I'll be paying out of pocket personally to get this done, and it's been pretty challenging, but I definitely want to do right by everyone."

"It will cost us some money," Hyman said, "but it's some Christmas good will too."

[...] Hyman thought maybe he would buy Unicorn's domain name and then reroute customers to Unagi's website. But after further discussion they arrived at a different arrangement. First, Evans would wire an undisclosed sum into Hyman's account. (Neither Hyman nor Evans would say how much.) Then, customers who bought a Unicorn scooter can choose one of two options: a free Unagi scooter or a full refund.

"I want this to end up with people better off than if they'd got a Unicorn scooter," Evans said.

Hyman says he risks pissing off the several thousand people who bought an Unagi scooter at full price, but it was worth to spread a little holiday cheer.

"Here comes Hanukkah Harry on the electric scooter," he said.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Twitter bug used to match millions of user phone numbers – TechCrunch:

A security researcher said he has matched 17 million phone numbers to Twitter user accounts by exploiting a flaw in Twitter’s Android app.

Ibrahim Balic found that it was possible to upload entire lists of generated phone numbers through Twitter’s contacts upload feature. “If you upload your phone number, it fetches user data in return,” he told TechCrunch.

He said Twitter’s contact upload feature doesn’t accept lists of phone numbers in sequential format — likely as a way to prevent this kind of matching. Instead, he generated more than two billion phone numbers, one after the other, then randomized the numbers, and uploaded them to Twitter through the Android app. (Balic said the bug did not exist in the web-based upload feature.)

Over a two-month period, Balic said he matched records from users in Israel, Turkey, Iran, Greece, Armenia, France and Germany, he said, but stopped after Twitter blocked the effort on December 20.

Balic provided TechCrunch with a sample of the phone numbers he matched. Using the site’s password reset feature, we verified his findings by comparing a random selection of usernames with the phone numbers that were provided.

In one case, TechCrunch was able to identify a senior Israeli politician using their matched phone number.

While he did not alert Twitter to the vulnerability, he took many of the phone numbers of high-profile Twitter users — including politicians and officials — to a WhatsApp group in an effort to warn users directly.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Apple will start enforcing its Mac app security policy in February:

Apple warned that it would eventually want notarization for non-App Store software running on macOS Catalina, and now there's a firm deadline for that request. The tech firm has informed developers that all of these apps will have to be notarized from February 3rd, 2020 onward if they're going to run "by default." Older apps will still run trouble-free, and you can still run non-notarized apps if you're willing to jump through a few hoops -- this will just prevent you from launching newer apps from beyond the Mac App Store without doing something else first.

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MrPlow writes:

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Twitter has announced that it will stop animating APNG files posted by users so that people with sensitivity to motion and flashing imagery can feel more confident when using the service.

The decision comes just days after the Epilepsy Foundation revealed that its Twitter account had been the target of an attack that used flashing images in a bid to trigger seizures.

Exposure to flashing lights and particular visual patterns can cause seizures in about 3% of those with epilepsy, according to the Epilepsy Foundation. "Photosensitive epilepsy," as it's known, is more common among children and adolescents.

The ability to configure Twitter to prevent videos and GIFs from autoplaying allows those with photosensitive epilepsy to protect themselves from flashing media, whether it's been tweeted innocently or as part of a malicious act. But Twitter Support said this week that Animated PNG files are able to bypass Twitter's autoplay settings, so it's now preventing them from animating when posted.

Twitter said it had made the decision "for the safety of people with sensitivity to motion and flashing imagery, including those with epilepsy."

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/twitter-stops-some-images-animating-to-protect-those-with-epilepsy/

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Google and YouTube moderators speak out on the work that gave them PTSD:

Content warning: This article contains descriptions of graphic and disturbing content related to terrorism and crimes against children.

Google and YouTube approach content moderation the same way all of the other tech giants do: paying a handful of other companies to do most of the work. One of those companies, Accenture, operates Google's largest content moderation site in the United States: an office in Austin, Texas, where content moderators work around the clock cleaning up YouTube.

Peter is one of hundreds of moderators at the Austin site. YouTube sorts the work for him and his colleagues into various queues, which the company says allows moderators to build expertise around its policies. There's a copyright queue, a hate and harassment queue, and an "adult" queue for porn.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for chromas:

Huawei says its replacement for Google services will soon launch in India:

China's top smartphone maker Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is hoping to throw off the shackles of the Android operating system with the launch of its own version of Google Mobile Services.

The replacement set of services, called Huawei Mobile Services, would allow the company's smartphones to run their own versions of Google's suite of services, which includes applications such as Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Maps and the Google Play Store.

In addition, Huawei has also started engaging with Indian developers, offering them lucrative incentives to build localized mobile services for its smartphones in the country.

In an interview with The Economic Times, Charles Peng, chief executive officer of Huawei and Honor India, said the company was in talks with the developers of the top 150 applications in India and was confident of ensuring their availability in its own app store by next year.

"We have our own HMS and are trying to build a mobile ecosystem," Peng told the Times. "Most of the key apps such as navigation, payments, gaming and messaging will be ready by December end."

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.codeblueprint.co.uk/2019/12/23/linux-preemption-latency-throughput.html

What is preemption?

Preemption, otherwise known as preemptive scheduling, is an operating system concept that allows running tasks to be forcibly interrupted by the kernel so that other tasks can run. Preemption is essential for fairly scheduling tasks and guaranteeing that progress is made because it prevents tasks from hogging the CPU either unwittingly or intentionally. And because it's handled by the kernel, it means that tasks don't have to worry about voluntarily giving up the CPU.

It can be useful to think of preemption as a way to reduce scheduler latency. But reducing latency usually also affects throughput, so there's a balance that needs to be maintained between getting a lot of work done (high throughput) and scheduling tasks as soon as they're ready to run (low latency).

The Linux kernel supports multiple preemption models so that you can tune the preemption behaviour for your workload.

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requerdanos writes:

Voluntary DNA tests fall somewhere between "bad idea" and "danger, stay away" as documented pretty well here previously. It's not surprising that tech- and privacy- minded people might hold this position, but now that position is being echoed by the U.S. Pentagon.

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Joseph Kernan and James Stewart, acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, said [in a Dec. 20th memo] that DNA testing companies were targeting military members with discounts and other undisclosed incentives. "Tests that provide health information have varying levels of validity, and many are not reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration before they are offered," the memo said.

The tests might [pose] more risk to military members than regular consumers. Inaccuracies could negatively affect the required disclosure of those members' medical information, the memo said. "Moreover, there is increased concern in the scientific community that outside parties are exploiting the use of genetic materials for questionable purposes, including mass surveillance and the ability to track individuals without their authorization or awareness," the memo said. The officials told military personnel to refrain from using the kits until otherwise notified.

[...]

[C]onsumer advocates have cautioned the tens of millions of people who have used at-home DNA kits... "at the end of the day you may have a good time but the company now can sell that information 100 different ways," Peter Pitts, of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, told NBC News in 2017. "You don't want that information displayed to other people," he added. "Ultimately you don't want an employer to have access to your information."

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barbara hudson writes:

I know, yet another Boeing story. But it's like herpes — the gift that keeps on giving.

The same day that Boeing CEO Muilenburg crashed and burned as Boeing CEO, the criminal investigation into Boeing heated up, with Boeing's test pilot hiring criminal lawyers and refusing to turn over documents to the Department of Justice under the 5th amendment, saying in effect that turning them over "may tend to incriminate him."

The embattled US aircraft maker Boeing has reportedly sent US regulators "troubling communications" related to the development of the 737 MAX – on the same day that the CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, was forced to step aside.

According to a senior Boeing executive, the documents include new messages from Mark Forkner, a senior company test pilot who complained of "egregious" erratic behavior in flight simulator tests of Boeing's MCAS anti-stall system, and referred to "Jedi mind tricks" to persuade regulators to approve the plane.

The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Seattle Times that the Forkner communications contain the same kind of "trash talking" about Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) regulators as the earlier messages released in October.

So what would make Forkner, the test pilot, lawyer up?

Forkner, meanwhile, has reportedly hired his own criminal defense lawyers and invoked his fifth amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid turning over records to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal inquiry into the company's handling of the 737 Max's development.

It was Forkner who requested that information about MCAS be omitted from flight manuals and pilot training, rendering the pilots of both the doomed Lion Air and Ethiopian flights helpless when the system kicked in, pushing the plane's nose down repeatedly until they ultimately lost control.

But the timing of the latest information release is likely to increase anger surrounding Boeing's handling of the crisis, even as a new CEO, David Calhoun, takes the reins early next year.

[Ed Note - Emphasis added by submitter]

canopic jug writes:

Paul Stamatiou has written a blog post about getting started with hardware security keys. He provides a short introductory guide as to why they are a good idea to use, what they are, and how to get started using them:

Security keys, security tokens, U2F keys, roaming authenticators, platform authenticators—whatever you want to call them—are hardware authenticators that run public-key cryptography operations in a manner that is entirely isolated from the rest of mobile device or computer. There are two general classes of security keys: internal platform authenticators and external roaming authenticators.

Platform authenticators are integrated inside of a device. They may take the form of an integrated security chip accessible by software for the purpose of web authentication, such as the security chip in the Pixel 3, or biometrics devices like fingerprint readers and facial recognition sensors.

This article has primarily been about other variant: roaming authenticators. These are the little external hardware authenticators you connect to any device (via Bluetooth LE, NFC or USB) to carry out your authentication needs. They communicate with your computer via FIDO CTAP (Client to Authenticator Protocol).

His advice includes setting up a spare key in case the primary hardware token is lost or damaged.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

It has a USB port in the corner. If you plug it into a computer, it boots in about 6 seconds and shows up over USB as a flash drive and a virtual serial port that you can use to log into the card's shell. The flash drive has a README file, a copy of my résumé, and some of my photography. The shell has several games and Unix classics such as fortune and rogue, a small 2048, and a small MicroPython interpreter.

All this is accomplished on a very small 8MB flash chip. The bootloader fits in 256KB, the kernel is 1.6MB, and the whole root filesystem is 2.4MB.

[...] The whole thing costs under $3.

https://www.thirtythreeforty.net/posts/2019/12/my-business-card-runs-linux/

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for SoyCow1337:

Amazon's Choice Products Aren't Always What They Claim to Be:

The Amazon's Choice badges customers turn to for endorsed or recommended products were found sometimes to be fake or even unsafe.

An investigation published by the Wall Street Journal reveals that the Amazon's Choice badge can be attached to products that make false claims, have safety concerns, or are even manipulated by the sellers. The investigation said that while there are legitimate listings with a badge, customers should double-check what is "endorsed" by the tech giant.

The Journal identified that the badge is more likely to appear on Amazon's AmazonBasics products and that sellers were able to manipulate the endorsement by promoting specific keywords in the products' description or contained other brand names.

Examples of fake or illegitimate Amazon's Choice products named in the investigation include cellphone chargers that claim they are made by Apple but are a completely different brand, as well as a fat burner supplement, which makes claims that are against Amazon's policies.

Amazon's Choice badges were created in 2015 to coincide with the Amazon Alexa, so people could say, "Alexa, buy a cell phone charger," and Alexa would add the top Amazon's choice result to the shopping cart.

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