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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/03/11/pandemic-drives-phone-computer-right-to-repair-bills

Colleen Creer, a 26-year-old customer service rep from Portland, Oregon, was in a bind at the end of last year. She'd just lost her in-person job with a major retailer due to a COVID-19 closure and wanted to do the same type of work remotely. One problem: Creer, who has lived on the edge of poverty for years, didn't have a computer.

Enter Free Geek, a nonprofit in Portland that salvages broken laptops, tablets and desktops, fixes them and provides them at low or no-cost to people who can't afford new ones. But while the pandemic heightened the demand for Free Geek's repaired computers, corporate policies preventing easy access to parts, manuals and equipment made it harder for the nonprofit to complete its mission.

"It's made the difference between me being able to obtain my housing and put food on my table and obtain my puppy and have him here," Creer said of her new desktop computer. "I just took my driver's permit test. Things like that. I wouldn't have been able to get them done if I hadn't gotten the computer from Free Geek."

The pandemic has made living without a computer harder than ever. Employees are working remotely, kids are going to school via laptop, and grandparents are visiting with their grandkids on screens. At the same time, the pandemic has made it harder to get broken devices fixed, as many big chain stores have ceased offering on-site repairs. As a result, people have been forced to send their devices to authorized repair facilities—often waiting weeks for them to be returned.

Many are powerless to avoid that inconvenience because small repair shops and do-it-yourselfers can't get the parts or manuals they need to complete the job. The problem has become more pronounced in the past decade, as personal devices, appliances and machinery have become increasingly sophisticated. At the same time, brand-name manufacturers have become stingier with spare parts and maintenance information.

[Ed Note - This story ws also submitted by c0lo via IRC. - Fnord]

Original Submission

Rich writes:

This is a special submission because it does not point to a story, but points out that there is no story.

On nearly every mainstream website, we are now presented with a screen for privacy settings. A list of data collecting vendors is shown, with a switch next to them, and there is a master switch "Disable All". Often, the master switch is not needed, because all the vendors in the list are already disabled. Once clicking "Save & Exit", we can proceed to the page. However, there is also, in very small text, a link to "Legitimate Interest", which takes us to a second list of data collecting vendors. This list is longer, the switches are all enabled, and there is no master switch. There may even be a mention that our data is going to be processed outside of regulations.

Aside from the time lost by clicking through the pop-up screens instead of respecting the browser do-not-track settings, this dark-pattern cheating should be of concern to any privacy advocate. Yet there is no sign of any awareness. Searching for the term "Legitimate Interest" comes up with only small snippets which seem to be mostly geared to advertisers. An occasional story (like https://www.huntonprivacyblog.com/2020/12/01/dutch-court-overturns-dpa-fine-on-legitimate-interest-legal-basis/) may point to legal details.

With the scope of the issue, one would expect privacy advocates, or even journalists worth their job title, to be up in arms about it. But nothing can be seen anywhere.

Fellow Soylentils, why is it so?

[Ed note: Is this common? I do not recall ever seeing this. Then again, I generally run my browser with Javascript disabled. Would that explain it? --martyb]

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

New regulations were approved under California's Consumer Privacy Acton Monday that will prohibit the use of so-called dark patterns — tricks deployed by websites or apps that seek to frustrate or bamboozle users into doing things they wouldn't normally do.

In a Monday press release, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced the new regulations, approved by the state's Office of Administrative Law, and said that the updated restrictions will strengthen the landmark CCPA legislation approved in August 2020.

Imagine you're navigating a website or watching an in-app ad when you're suddenly redirected to a subscription page, even though you have no interest in whatever product is being marketed at you. Such tactics are what's known as "dark patterns" — underhanded strategies that rely on "confusing language or unnecessary steps such as forced clicking or scrolling through multiple screens or listening to why you shouldn't opt out of their data sale," according to an infographic provided by the California AG's office. The tactics are more widespread than you'd imagine, and banning them under the CCPA is a step towards ensuring that consumers are protected from deceptive business practices.

GIZMODO

[California Consumer Privacy Act - 2018]: Consumer Privacy Act - 2018

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

Study examines fans of 'Game of Thrones' characters:

If you count yourself among those who lose themselves in the lives of fictional characters, scientists now have a better idea of how that happens.

Researchers found that the more immersed people tend to get into "becoming" a fictional character, the more they use the same part of the brain to think about the character as they do to think about themselves.

"When they think about a favorite fictional character, it appears similar in one part of the brain as when they are thinking about themselves," said Timothy Broom, lead author of the study and doctoral student in psychology at The Ohio State University.

The study was published online recently in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

The study involved scanning the brains of 19 self-described fans of the HBO series "Game of Thrones" while they thought about themselves, nine of their friends and nine characters from the series. (The characters were Bronn, Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, Davos Seaworth, Jaime Lannister, Jon Snow, Petyr Baelish, Sandor Clegane and Ygritte.)

Participants reported which "Game of Thrones" character they felt closest to and liked the most.

[...] The findings help explain how fiction can have such a big impact on some people, said Dylan Wanger, co-author of the study and assistant professor of psychology at Ohio State.

ScienceDaily

[Story Source]: The Ohio State University

[Journal Reference]: Oxford University Press

Have you experienced this while immersed in playing games ? If yes, which fictional character do you identify with and why ?

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:

IBM develops AI to invent new antibiotics – and it's made two already:

The IBM Research team created an AI system that's much faster at exploring the entire possibility space for molecular configurations. First, the researchers started with a model called a deep generative autoencoder, which essentially examines a range of peptide sequences, captures important information about their function and the molecules that make them up, and looks for similarities to other peptides.

Next, a system called Controlled Latent attribute Space Sampling (CLaSS) is applied. This system uses the data gathered and generates new peptide molecules with specific, desired properties. In this case, that's antimicrobial effectiveness.

But of course, the ability to kill bacteria isn't the only requirement for an antibiotic – it also needs to be safe for human use, and ideally work across a range of classes of bacteria. So the AI-generated molecules are then run through deep learning classifiers to weed out ineffective or toxic combinations.

Over the course of 48 days, the AI system identified, synthesized and experimented with 20 new antibiotic peptide candidates. Two of them in particular turned out to be particularly promising – they were highly potent against a range of bacteria from the two main classes (Gram-positive and Gram-negative), by punching holes in the bugs' outer membranes. In cell cultures and mouse tests, they also had low toxicity, and seemed very unlikely to lead to further drug resistance in E. coli.

Journal Reference:
Payel Das, Tom Sercu, Kahini Wadhawan, et al. Accelerated antimicrobial discovery via deep generative models and molecular dynamics simulations [open], Nature Biomedical Engineering (DOI: 10.1038/s41551-021-00689-x)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

SEAKR wins $60 million DARPA contract to demonstrate autonomous satellite operations - SpaceNews:

WASHINGTON — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced March 12 it awarded SEAKR Engineering a $60.4 million contract to develop a data processing system for satellites to operate autonomously.

SEAKR, based in Centennial, Colorado, was selected by DARPA in 2019 to develop the artificial brain of the agency's Blackjack satellite network. The new contract is for work to be completed by March 2022.

[...] The entire Blackjack constellation is projected to have as many as 20 satellites. DARPA has ordered 10 buses so far from Blue Canyon Technologies. Raytheon is providing missile warning infrared sensors. Lockheed Martin was selected as the satellite integrator.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

There Should be About 7 Interstellar Objects Passing Through the Inner Solar System Every Year:

In October 19th, 2017, the first interstellar object ever detected flew past Earth on its way out of the Solar System. Less than two years later, a second object was detected, an easily-identified interstellar comet designated as 2I/Borisov. The appearance of these two objects verified earlier theoretical work that concluded that interstellar objects (ISOs) regularly enter our Solar System.

The question of how often this happens has been the subject of considerable research since then. According to new study led by researchers from the Initiative for Interstellar Studies (i4is), roughly 7 ISOs enter our Solar System every year and follow predictable orbits while they are here. This research could allow us to send a spacecraft to rendezvous with one of these objects in the near future.

The research that describes these findings was conducted by multiple researchers from i4is, a non-profit organization dedicated to the realization of interstellar flight in the very near future. They were joined by researchers from the Florida Institute of Technology, Harvard's Initiative for Interstellar Studies (ITC), the University of Texas at Austin, the Technical University of Munich, and the Observatoire de Paris.

The study of 'Oumuamua in October of 2017 set off a revolution in astronomy and the study of celestial objects. Not only was this an object that had formed in another star system, but its arrival and detection implied a large population of such objects. The detection of 2I/Borisov in 2019 confirmed what many astronomers already suspected – that ISOs enter our Solar System on a pretty regular basis.

Very soon, we can expect an alien spaceship too.

Abstract and full article are available on the arXiv pre-print server.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

“Shocking” genetic data suggest Ebola lurked in survivor for 5-6 years:

The Ebola viruses behind a new outbreak in Guinea are stunningly similar to viruses identified during the massive West Africa outbreak that spanned 2013 to 2016, according to a new genetic analysis. The finding suggests that virus may have silently persisted in a survivor for at least five years and that the current outbreak was sparked by that unlucky person, rather than a spillover from an animal reservoir.

In the genetic analysis posted online Friday, a group of international researchers report that Ebola viruses collected from the current outbreak in Guinea have only a dozen or so genetic differences from Ebola variants collected from the same area of Guinea in 2014. Based on what researchers know about the pace at which Ebola collects such genetic substitutions—its evolutionary rate—that number of accumulated differences should have totaled over 110 in that timespan, not 12.

Previously:
Ebola is Back: Liberia on Alert, Guinea and the DRC Report Deaths

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Chip shortage and high prices threaten supplies of SBCs and other electronics products

A few weeks ago, we started to hear news about a chip shortage for the automotive industry, but the shortage appears to be affecting all sectors now apparently due to a drought in Taiwan where a reservoir could be a risk of being depleted, and TSMC has been asked to reduce its water usage by 7 percent.

I've also started to see several companies in the maker market warn about shortages and price increases. Pine64 announced it would only open pre-order for PinePhone, PinebookPro, PineTab, and other products once they could secure stocks of components, and while they hope to be able to do so within this month, there's no guarantee.

Ameridroid also reported that Hardkernel and another unnamed manufacturer expected really large delays possibly into 2022.

Raspberry Pi least affected?

We asked Raspberry Pi creator and Chief Executive of Raspberry Pi Trading, Eben Upton, to comment on this issue. "We're not expecting any impact from this (or the other factors causing tightness in global supply chains) at present: we're getting great support from our component vendor partners."

Companies like Qualcomm are being affected by several other problems:

AnonTechie writes:

US claims seller of encrypted phones violated racketeering and drug laws:

A US grand jury has indicted the CEO of a Canadian company that sells encrypted phones, alleging that he and an associate violated racketeering and drug laws. On Friday, the federal grand jury "returned an indictment against the Chief Executive Officer and an associate of the Canada-based firm Sky Global on charges that they knowingly and intentionally participated in a criminal enterprise that facilitated the transnational importation and distribution of narcotics through the sale and service of encrypted communications devices," the Department of Justice said in a press release.

Sky Global CEO Jean-Francois Eap and Thomas Herdman, a former distributor of Sky Global devices, were charged with a conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), a law designed to punish organized crime. They were also charged with a conspiracy to distribute illegal drugs and aiding and abetting. The racketeering and drug counts each carry maximum penalties of life in prison, the DOJ said. The US is seeking criminal convictions and forfeiture of "at least $100,000,000" worth of assets.

The indictment is available in this Motherboard article.

Soon all encryption will be illegal, the US Department of Justice considers encryption a crime and surprisingly, Canada apparently colluded with them.

Original Submission

AnonTechie writes:

A concept from physics called negentropy could help your life run smoother

Life is full of small decisions: Should I pick up that sock on the floor? Should I do the dishes before bed? What about fixing the leaky faucet in the bathroom?

Leaving a sock on the ground is a manifestation of a concept from physics you may have heard of: entropy is a measure of how much energy is lost in a system.

If a system loses too much energy, it will disintegrate into chaos. It takes only a little bit of energy to pick up one sock. But if you don't take care of your yard, let pipes stay clogged and never fix electrical problems, it all adds up to a chaotic home that would take a lot of energy to fix. And that chaos will leach away your time and ability to accomplish other things .

The good news is that entropy has an opposite –  negentropy.

As a researcher who studies social systems, I have found that thinking in terms of negentropy and energy can help you fight against entropy and chaos in daily life.

Do you think this will reduce the chaos in your life ?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

AMD Unveils EPYC 'Milan' 7003 CPUs, Zen 3 Comes to 64-Core Server Chips

AMD unveiled its EPYC 7003 'Milan' processors today, claiming that the chips, which bring the company's powerful Zen 3 architecture to the server market for the first time, take the lead as the world's fastest server processor with its flagship 64-core 128-thread EPYC 7763. Like the rest of the Milan lineup, this chip comes fabbed on the 7nm process and is drop-in compatible with existing servers. AMD claims it brings up to twice the performance of Intel's competing Xeon Cascade Lake Refresh chips in HPC, Cloud, and enterprise workloads, all while offering a vastly better price-to-performance ratio.

Milan's agility lies in the Zen 3 architecture and its chiplet-based design. This microarchitecture brings many of the same benefits that we've seen with AMD's Ryzen 5000 series chips that dominate the desktop PC market, like a 19% increase in IPC and a larger unified L3 cache. Those attributes, among others, help improve AMD's standing against Intel's venerable Xeon lineup in key areas, like single-threaded work, and offer a more refined performance profile across a broader spate of applications.

One interesting new SKU is the EPYC 7663, a 56-core, 112-thread CPU with 7 working cores on each of the 8-core chiplets. There is also a 28-core EPYC 7453.

Next up, Zen 4 "Genoa".

Also at AnandTech, The Next Platform, Phoronix, and Ars Technica.

See also: The Tour of Italy with EPYC Milan: Interview with AMD's Forrest Norrod
AMD video announcement (51m4s) and recap (10m43s)

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Almost a fifth of Facebook employees are now working on VR and AR: report

Facebook has nearly 10,000 employees in its division working on augmented reality and virtual reality devices, according to a report in The Information based on internal organizational data. The number means the Reality Labs division accounts for almost a fifth of the people working at Facebook worldwide.

This suggests that Facebook has been significantly accelerating its VR and AR efforts. As UploadVR noted in 2017, the Oculus VR division accounted for over a thousand employees at a time when Facebook's headcount was 18,770 overall, indicating a percentage somewhere north of five percent.

[...] The $299 Quest 2 was preordered five times as much as its predecessor, with developers seeing a boost in sales of their existing titles.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Outgoing CEO says Panasonic must cut Tesla reliance as battery tie-up evolves: FT

Panasonic Corp's outgoing Chief Executive Kazuhiro Tsuga said the company will need to reduce its heavy reliance on Tesla Inc by making batteries more compatible with electric vehicles from other global carmakers, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

"At some point, we need to graduate from our one-legged approach of relying solely on Tesla," Tsuga, who will step down after nine years as CEO from April 1, told the newspaper in an interview. "We are entering a different phase and we need to keep an eye on supplying manufacturers other than Tesla."

Panasonic Must Reduce Reliance On Tesla, Outgoing CEO Says

Let's recall the Adamas Intelligence report, which indicated that about 90% of Panasonic's batteries deployed in passenger xEVs in 2020 went to Tesla.

[...] One of the most interesting comments from the interview with Kazuhiro Tsuga is that "Currently it is difficult to sell [those batteries] unless there is a company that is able to handle our cylindrical batteries with Tesla specifications". Other major manufacturers are usually not using the cylindrical battery cell format, but rather pouch or prismatic. It appears that they also prefer easier to use cells.

Meanwhile, Tesla is reducing its reliance on Panasonic, having started development of its own cells for in-house production, and partnering with LG:

LG Energy Solution aims to build advanced battery cells for Tesla Inc electric vehicles in 2023 and is considering potential production sites in the United States and Europe, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. Tesla has not yet agreed to a deal that would expand LG's role in its supply chain beyond China, one of the sources said.

See also: Tesla strikes new Panasonic battery deal as sales and shares soar
Tesla and LG in talks to produce 4680 battery cell at new factory

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The The Hitchhiker's Guide to Online Anonymity is a valuable resource for online privacy. The guide covers a number of topics and they also offer PDF downloads and more.

Original Submission