SoylentNews

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

FTC Orders Amazon, YouTube, Discord, and 6 More to Explain What the Hell They're Doing With Your Data:

The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced it was issuing orders to nine of the most popular social media and streaming platforms in the U.S., requiring them to offer up intel on business practices ranging from data collection to advertising, to the way that user engagement gets tracked overtime.

The orders issued to Amazon, Discord, Facebook, Reddit, Snap, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, and TikTok parent company Bytedance, aren't intended for any specific regulatory action. Rather, the inquiries are meant to be part of a wide-ranging study examining how each of these companies treats consumer privacy.

As Axios, which first reported news of the FTC probe, points out, just because this initiative lacks a specific goal doesn't mean it is inconsequential. These types of inquiries, specifically known as 6(b) orders, have been used in the past to gather data that can be used in later investigations.

Additional coverage at ArsTechnica

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Sentencing Nears for Gamer Who DDoS'd PlayStation Network as a Minor:

A person behind a October 2016 cyberattack that temporarily crippled Sony's Playstation Network and other online services has pleaded guilty to committing the act as a juvenile, Justice Department officials in New Hampshire said Thursday.

For no fewer than 11 months, officials said, the individual "conspired with others" to create possibly multiple botnets, one of which was used in 2016 to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack against the PlayStation Network.

[...] The former-juvenile offender's sentence will be decided next month.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Trucks with first COVID-19 vaccine in US get ready to roll:

The first of many freezer-packed COVID-19 vaccine vials made their way to distribution sites across the United States on Sunday, as the nation's pandemic deaths approached the horrifying new milestone of 300,000.

The rollout of the Pfizer vaccine, the first to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration, ushers in the biggest vaccination effort in U.S. history — one that health officials hope the American public will embrace, even as some have voiced initial skepticism or worry. Shots are expected to be given to health care workers and nursing home residents beginning Monday.

[...] "This is a historic day," said Richard W. Smith, who oversees operations in the Americas for FedEx Express, which is delivering 630-some packages of vaccine to distribution sites across the country. United Parcel Service also is transporting a share of the vaccine.

[...] Dr. Stephen Hahn, commissioner of the FDA, which approved the Pfizer vaccine Friday, has repeatedly insisted that the agency's decision was based on science, not politics, despite a White House threat to fire him if the vaccine wasn't approved before Saturday.

[...] While the vaccine was determined to be safe, regulators in the U.K. are investigating several severe allergic reactions. The FDA's instructions tell providers not to give it to those with a known history of severe allergic reactions to any of its ingredients.

The Moderna vaccine will be reviewed by an expert panel Thursday and soon afterward could be allowed for public use.

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises:

Cyberpunk 2077, one of the most highly anticipated video games of the past decade, has already been delayed three times. Employees at CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind the game, have reportedly been required to work long hours, including six-day weeks, for more than a year. The practice is called "crunch" in the video game industry, and it is sadly all too common.

It's also something that the leadership at CD Projekt Red said wasn't going to happen to the people making Cyberpunk 2077.

[...] In January 2020, CD Projekt announced the game's first delay. [...] That same day, during a public call with investors, CD Projekt revealed that crunch would ultimately be needed to get the game done on time. It would also be mandatory for at least some employees.

[...] In September, Bloomberg reiterated what CD Projekt's leaders said to investors months before. A leaked email mandated six-day work weeks. Crunch had become a requirement, and according to anonymous employees, some developers had been working nights and weekends "for more than a year."

[...] But let's not sugarcoat it: Crunch is cruel. It is the result of poor management, and evidence of a disregard for the people working to make the games that we love to play. Crunch at this scale, and for this duration, casts a shadow over Cyberpunk 2077 — and actively undermines some of the progressive and cautionary themes no doubt present in the game itself.

Crunch Time

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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Academics turn RAM into Wi-Fi cards to steal data from air-gapped systems:

Academics from an Israeli university have published new research today detailing a technique to convert a RAM card into an impromptu wireless emitter and transmit sensitive data from inside a non-networked air-gapped computer that has no Wi-Fi card.

Named AIR-FI, the technique is the work of Mordechai Guri, the head of R&D at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Israel.

Over the last half-decade, Guri has led tens of research projects that investigated stealing data through unconventional methods from air-gapped systems.

[...] In his research paper, titled "AIR-FI: Generating Covert WiFi Signals from Air-Gapped Computers," Guri shows that perfectly timed read-write operations to a computer's RAM card can make the card's memory bus emit electromagnetic waves consistent with a weak Wi-Fi signal.

This signal can then be picked up by anything with a Wi-Fi antenna in the proximity of an air-gapped system, such as smartphones, laptops, IoT devices, smartwatches, and more.

Journal Reference:
Guri, Mordechai. AIR-FI: Generating Covert Wi-Fi Signals from Air-Gapped Computers, (DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.06884)

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning:

A joint investigation between Bellingcat and The Insider, in cooperation with Der Spiegel and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) in the poisoning of the prominent Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny[*]. Moreover, the August 2020 poisoning in the Siberian city of Tomsk appears to have happened after years of surveillance, which began in 2017 shortly after Navalny first announced his intention to run for president of Russia. Throughout 2017, and again in 2019 and 2020, FSB operatives from a clandestine unit specialized in working with poisonous substances shadowed Navalny during his trips across Russia, traveling alongside him on more than 30 overlapping flights to the same destinations. It is also possible there were earlier attempts to poison Navalny, including one in the Western Russian city of Kaliningrad only a month before the near-fatal Novichok poisoning in Siberia.

Our investigation identified three FSB operatives from this clandestine unit who traveled alongside Navalny to Novosibirsk and then followed him to the city of Tomsk where he was ultimately poisoned. These operatives, two of whom traveled under cover identities, are Alexey Alexandrov (39), Ivan Osipov (44) – both medical doctors – and Vladimir Panyaev (40). These three were supported and supervised by at least five more FSB operatives, some of whom also traveled to Omsk, where Navalny had been hospitalized. Members of the unit communicated with one another throughout the trip, with sudden peaks of communication just before the poisoning as well as during the night-time hours (Moscow time) when Navalny left his hotel and headed to the Tomsk airport.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

NASA just opened "Astromaterials 3D" to let anyone see and study lunar rock samples and Antarctic meteorites. From a release:

Nearly 8 years in the making, Astromaterials 3D is an information-rich visualization tool for researchers and the general public. Combining high-resolution photography, structure-from-motion photogrammetry and X-ray computed tomography, the project succeeds at producing research-grade interactive 3D models of the exterior and interior of samples in a single coordinate system.

Rocks from Other Worlds Now Virtually Available:

NASA's astromaterials sample collections, which include a library of Apollo lunar and Antarctic meteorite samples, are now offered online through a new virtual exploration tool for scientific researchers and the public. The Astromaterials 3D Explorer site offers an unprecedented research tool to engage the public in a new way to explore the significance of NASA's space rock collections.

[...] "Most of the samples are preserved for scientific research. There are some subsamples available for educators or in exhibitions and installations around the world, but most of the collection is in a vaulted cleanroom facility for their preservation and protection," said Erika Blumenfeld, transdisciplinary artist and principal investigator and project lead for 3D Astromaterials science, at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

[...] Viewers navigating through the samples on the site can follow each rock's history, learning what happened to the rock — and follow it to its ultimate destination, like Antarctica in the case of the meteorites.

t-3 writes:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-03/coho-salmon-tire-chemical

When officials in Seattle spent millions of dollars restoring the creeks along Puget Sound — tending to the vegetation, making the stream beds less muddy, building better homes for fish — they were thrilled to see coho salmon[*] reappear.

But when it rained, more than half, sometimes all, of the coho in a creek would suffer a sudden death.

These mysterious die-offs — an alarming phenomenon that has been reported from Northern California to British Columbia — have stumped biologists and toxicologists for decades. Numerous tests ruled out pesticides, disease and other possible causes, such as hot temperatures and low dissolved oxygen.

Now, after 20 years of investigation, researchers in Washington state, San Francisco and Los Angeles say they have found the culprit: a very poisonous yet little-known chemical related to a preservative used in car tires.

[...] The chemical is just one of a vast number of contaminants that washes off roads whenever it rains. This giant soup of pollutants, which includes trillions of microplastics, rushes down drains and into creeks and ultimately into the sea.

"We pretty much figured out that anywhere there's a road and people are driving their car, little bits of tire end up coming off your tire and end up in the stormwater that flows off that road," said Ed Kolodziej, an environmental engineer and chemist at the University of Washington (Tacoma/Seattle), whose lab led a study that was published Thursday in the journal Science. "We were able to get all the way down to this one highly toxic chemical — something that kills large fish quickly and we think is probably found on every single busy road in the world."

[*] Coho salmon.

Journal Reference:
Zhenyu Tian, Haoqi Zhao, Katherine T. Peter, et al. A ubiquitous tire rubber–derived chemical induces acute mortality in coho salmon [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.abd6951)

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DannyB writes:

Microsoft Software Class Action Settlement

Fantastic News if...
* you were a Canadian resident as of May 25, 2016...
* and between 1998 (dec 23) and 2010 (mar 11) you bought...
* a license for PC versions of Microsoft MS-DOS, Windows, Word, Excel, Office, Works Suite or Home Essentials software
* as a purchase for personal or business use in Canada
* on an Intel c\ ompatible PC
* (or if you purchased a PC pre-infected with Microsoft software during the class period...)

Woo Hoo! YOU MAY BE ELIGIBLE FOR COMPENSATION FROM THE MICROSOFT SETTLEMENT !!!

Up to $6.50 to $13 per Microsoft product license !!!
_{Up to max $250 for individual licenses
^{Shhhhh! No receipts are required. But don't tell anyone that!}}
or up to $650 for volume licenses with required documentation and jumping through hoops

From the article:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for requerdanos:

Drug reverses age-related cognitive decline within days:

Just a few doses of an experimental drug can reverse age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility in mice, according to a new study by UC San Francisco scientists. The drug, called ISRIB, has already been shown in laboratory studies to restore memory function months after traumatic brain injury (TBI), reverse cognitive impairments in Down Syndrome, prevent noise-related hearing loss, fight certain types of prostate cancer, and even enhance cognition in healthy animals.

In the new study, published December 1, 2020 in the open-access journal eLife, researchers showed rapid restoration of youthful cognitive abilities in aged mice, accompanied by a rejuvenation of brain and immune cells that could help explain improvements in brain function.

[...] The ISR normally detects problems with protein production in a cell—a potential sign of viral infection or cancer-promoting gene mutations—and responds by putting the brakes on cell's protein-synthesis machinery. This safety mechanism is critical for weeding out misbehaving cells, but if stuck in the on position in a tissue like the brain, it can lead to serious problems, as cells lose the ability to perform their normal activities, Walter and colleagues have found.

In particular, recent animal studies [...] have implicated chronic ISR activation in the persistent cognitive and behavioral deficits seen in patients after TBI, by showing that, in mice, brief ISRIB treatment can reboot the ISR and restore normal brain function almost overnight.

canopic jug writes:

OpenBSD user Lari Huttunen has a blog post in which he dives into using OpenBSD's rdomain(4) feature to sort work VPNs into separate kernel-level routing tables. This segregates the network traffic in such a way as to prevent traffic in separate routing tables from interacting. With many working from home, insecure work networks have begun to intrude into the home LANs via work-related VPNs. By adding the home network to a work VPN, the LAN becomes merged with work's internal network, usually quite insecure at that. His goal is to keep his personal home devices, especially the IoT items, separate from the now mandatory work-related VPNs on his small-office / home-office network. That way, the work networks can no longer access his appliances.

Problem Statement

Over the years, companies and corporations have become ever more hungry for everything related to their users' geolocation, telemetry, demography, relationsip with one another, interests, convictions, social preferences - you name it. At the same time, users wanting to consume digital services meet a lot of ridiculous restrictions depending on where they live and how they access the Internet. Ecojails, in one form or another are created by multi-national corporations in order to capitalize everything about their users' behavior. In 2020, this has all been exacerbated by everyone suddenly working from home if possible.

Motivation

This is why I wanted to research how identity-based routing could enhance users' privacy in a totally transparent way. I've never been a big fan of VPNs as a security solution, but have come to realize that they have a role to play in privacy. Since soon everything needs to be online to function from a vacuum cleaner to dish washer to toaster, it is increasingly difficult to keep the Internet of Targets at bay. Moreover, our personal telemetry devices feed out a constant stream of information to the ecojail masters, be they Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Alibaba or Netflix. Taking back control will not be easy and one will evidently need to compromise along the way, but realization is the first step to recovery.

Lari's solution works from tools provided by OpenBSD's base system.

Previously:
(2020) WireGuard Imported Into OpenBSD
(2019) How SSH Key Shielding Works
(2019) Dutch Govt Explains the Risks Behind DNS-Over-HTTPS Move
(2014) OpenSSH No Longer has to Depend on OpenSSL

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

Gut bacteria linked to endocannabinoid levels and depression:

Plenty of recent research has shown compelling correlations between gut microbiome alterations and mood disorders such as depression. But exactly how bacteria in the gut could be influencing depressive behaviors has been unclear. New research from a team of French scientists is shedding light on one possible causal mechanism, describing a pathway by which changes to the microbiome results in decreased activity in the hippocampus and subsequent depressive behavior.

The new research began by investigating microbiome changes in a mouse model of stress-induced depression. As well as initially examining the microbiome differences between healthy animals and animals with mood disorders, the researchers discovered those mood disorders could be transferred to the healthy animals via fecal transplants.

"Surprisingly, simply transferring the microbiota from an animal with mood disorders to an animal in good health was enough to bring about biochemical changes and confer depressive-like behaviors in the latter," explains Pierre-Marie Lledo, joint last author on the new study.

The next step was to investigate what mechanistic pathways could explain how the gut bacteria alterations were influencing depressive behaviors. It was here the researchers discovered changes in the depressed animals' endocannabinoid system.

[...] Changes to endocannabinoid signaling, particularly in the hippocampus, have been linked to depression and mood disorders, and in this new study, the researchers found microbiome alterations were associated with diminished endocannabinoid signaling in the hippocampus.

Journal Reference:
Grégoire Chevalier, Eleni Siopi, Laure Guenin-Macé, et al. Effect of gut microbiota on depressive-like behaviors in mice is mediated by the endocannabinoid system [open], Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19931-2)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Rewiring stroke survivors brains could alleviate depression:

A trial led by UniSA stroke researcher Dr Brenton Hordacre has found that large doses of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) significantly improve post-stroke depression by increasing brain activity.

Previous studies have experimented with the use of rTMS but this is the first time that a large treatment dose -- 30,000 electromagnetic pulses delivered over two weeks -- have been trialled, showing positive changes in brain function.

The findings, published in the Journal of Neurology, could signal a non-invasive, alternative treatment for post-stroke depression in place of medication, which can have negative side effects for many people.

South Australians are set to benefit from this research with the brain stimulation device now available at UniSA's City West campus to treat stroke patients suffering depression.

The $40,000 brain stimulator, partly funded by the Honda Foundation, could also potentially improve motor recovery, helping stroke patients develop new connections in the damaged brain.

[...] The treatment will be officially launched in the new year.

Journal Reference:
Brenton Hordacre, Kristina Comacchio, Lindy Williams, et al. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation for post-stroke depression: a randomised trial with neurophysiological insight [$], Journal of Neurology (DOI: 10.1007/s00415-020-10315-6)

Original Submission

canopic jug writes:

Atlas Obscura has a deep dive into the history and socio-economic factors behind the world's second most expensive spice, vanilla. Vanilla originates from and is still produced in Mexico. The plant, Vanilla Planiflora, is an orchid which grows in the wild in southeastern Mexico. The vines are easily grown, but only very rarely produce fruit outside their native range. Cultivating vanilla worldwide was only possible once it was known how to manually pollinate the flowers. The flowers last only for a matter of hours and although self-fertile, cannot self-pollinate without mechanical intervention. In regions like Madagascar, the pollination is done by hand. Madagascar has been the world's largest vanilla producer for a very long time for a wide range of reasons which the article explains.

It’s pretty likely that there is exactly one product from Madagascar in your home right now—no more, no less. That product is vanilla, and Madagascar is at the moment the world’s leading producer of this ubiquitous natural flavor—despite the fact that Madagascar is a very strange country to be the world’s leading producer of vanilla.

Vanilla, at least the vanilla we eat, is not native to Madagascar; it originated some 10,000 miles away. Madagascar is also a chaotic place to do business, as an article in The Economist’s 1843 Magazine showed in 2019. The modern vanilla industry in Madagascar involves crushing poverty, splurge-producing wealth, theft, murder, and money laundering—in addition to natural disasters and the leveling of pristine forests.

Vanilla is inexorably intertwined with food trends, colonialism, slavery, and capitalism at its most rank. Vanilla is the second-most-expensive spice in the world—saffron maintains that crown—and there’s nothing boring about it.

Since the vanilla orchid grows well in greenhouses, and industrial cultivation outside of Mexico needs manual pollination, it should be a decent candidate for urban vertical farms.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Hidden symmetry could be key to more robust quantum systems, researchers find:

Researchers have found a way to protect highly fragile quantum systems from noise, which could aid in the design and development of new quantum devices, such as ultra-powerful quantum computers.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, have shown that microscopic particles can remain intrinsically linked, or entangled, over long distances even if there are random disruptions between them. Using the mathematics of quantum theory, they discovered a simple setup where entangled particles can be prepared and stabilized even in the presence of noise by taking advantage of a previously unknown symmetry in quantum systems.

Their results, reported in the journal Physical Review Letters, open a new window into the mysterious quantum world that could revolutionize future technology by preserving quantum effects in noisy environments, which is the single biggest hurdle for developing such technology. Harnessing this capability will be at the heart of ultrafast quantum computers.

[...] Now, Dutta and his co-author Professor Nigel Cooper have discovered a robust quantum system where multiple pairs of qubits remain entangled even with a lot of noise.

[...] "We weren't expecting this stabilized type of entanglement at all," said Dutta. "We stumbled upon this hidden symmetry, which is very rare in these noisy systems."

They showed this hidden symmetry protects the entangled pairs and allows their number to be controlled from zero to a large maximum value. Similar conclusions can be applied to a broad class of physical systems and can be realized with already existing ingredients in experimental platforms, paving the way to controllable entanglement in a noisy environment.

Journal Reference:
Shovan Dutta, Nigel R. Cooper. Long-Range Coherence and Multiple Steady States in a Lossy Qubit Array, Physical Review Letters (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.240404)

Original Submission