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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Sacramento Might be Undergoing a Broadband Policy Reboot:

Senator Lena Gonzalez, the original author of EFF's sponsored S.B. 1130, has introduced the next iteration of that effort with S.B. 4. We go into more detail about the legislation here. But, in short, the bill would affirmative embrace the small local government/non-profit model of broadband by creating a state-backed bond financing program that would enable them to take 30- to 40-year, long-term, low-interest loans to finance fiber. The legislation also makes more modest adjustments to the California Advanced Service Fund grant program, with a handful of concessions agreed to after discussions over a previous version of this bill. But, in concert with the bond program, these changes would still yield a powerful formula for ending the digital divide.

Companion legislation in the Assembly led by Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry (A.B. 14) has also been introduced and indicates a merger of support from both California's Senate and Assembly on the path forward. This is welcome news, and EFF intends to support both bills as they are brought together. Local governments, particularly in rural California, are eager to take matters into their own hands, having seen the successes of other local governments in states such as Utah. There, 11 local governments banded together to build open access fiber infrastructure to enable local private competition and multi-gigabit services.

In this session,  S.B. 4 and A.B. 14 should be considered the means to enable smaller local government fiber. A.B. 34 will be well-situated to address problems for major cities such as Los Angeles, where systemic digital redlining against low income users is occurring today.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

Who is Camille Noûs, the fictitious French researcher with nearly 200 papers?:

Camille Noûs first appeared on the research scene 1 year ago, as a signatory to an open letter protesting French science policy. Since then, Noûs has been an author on 180 journal papers, in fields as disparate as astrophysics, molecular biology, and ecology, and is racking up citations.

But Noûs is not a real person. The name—intentionally added to papers, sometimes without the knowledge of journal editors—is meant to personify collective efforts in science and to protest individualism, according to RogueESR, a French research advocacy group that dreamed up the character. But the campaign is naïve and ethically questionable, says Lisa Rasmussen, a bioethicist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. It flouts the basic principle of taking responsibility alongside the credit of authorship, she says. And some journal editors are balking at going along with the protest.

RogueESR has spent the past year protesting a French research reform law that introduced new types of temporary research jobs. The group, which has no formal leader, says the changes threaten academic freedom and job security, and that the law's focus on metric-based research evaluation—such as numbers of publications or citations—emphasizes individual accomplishment too much and is damaging to the research culture.

Amid the protests, members of RogueESR had a subversive idea: What if they slipped a fictitious researcher in their author lists? "Hundreds of articles will make this name the top author on the planet," they wrote in a newsletter, "with the consequence of distorting certain bibliometric statistics and demonstrating the absurdity of individual quantitative assessment."

aristarchus writes:

Aurorae on Jupiter. Very interesting.

NASA's Juno reveals dark origins of one of Jupiter's grand light shows:

New results from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA's Juno mission reveal for the first time the birth of auroral dawn storms—the early morning brightening unique to Jupiter's spectacular aurorae. These immense, transient displays of light occur at both Jovian poles and had previously been observed only by ground-based and Earth-orbiting observatories, notably NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Results of this study were published March 16 in the journal AGU Advances.

First discovered by Hubble's Faint Object Camera in 1994, dawn storms consist of short-lived but intense brightening and broadening of Jupiter's main auroral oval—an oblong curtain of light that surrounds both poles—near where the atmosphere emerges from darkness in the early morning region. Before Juno, observations of Jovian ultraviolet aurora had offered only side views, hiding everything happening on the nightside of the planet.

"Observing Jupiter's aurora from Earth does not allow you to see beyond the limb, into the nightside of Jupiter's poles. Explorations by other spacecraft—Voyager, Galileo, Cassini—happened from relatively large distances and did not fly over the poles, so they could not see the complete picture," said Bertrand Bonfond, a researcher from the University of Liège in Belgium and lead author of the study. "That's why the Juno data is a real game changer, allowing us a better understanding what is happening on the nightside, where the dawn storms are born."

MP4 video of a storm

Dawn Storms! Hmm, not quite what they were expecting! But it is light rather than darkness.

Journal Reference:
B. Bonfond, Z. H. Yao, G. R. Gladstone, et al. Are Dawn Storms Jupiter's Auroral Substorms? [open], AGU Advances (DOI: 10.1029/2020AV000275)

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Spain to launch trial of four-day working week:

Spain could become one of the first countries in the world to trial the four-day working week after the government agreed to launch a modest pilot project for companies interested in the idea.

Earlier this year, the small leftwing Spanish party Más País announced that the government had accepted its proposal to test out the idea. Talks have since been held, with the next meeting expected to take place in the coming weeks.

"With the four-day work week (32 hours), we're launching into the real debate of our times," said Iñigo Errejón of Más País on Twitter. "It's an idea whose time has come."

From New Zealand to Germany, the idea has been steadily gaining ground globally. Hailed by its proponents as a means to increase productivity, improve the mental health of workers and fight climate change, the proposal has taken on new significance as the pandemic sharpens issues around wellbeing, burnout and work-life balance.

Leftwing parties in Spain – where a 44-day strike in Barcelona in 1919 resulted in the country becoming one of the first in western Europe to adopt the eight-hour workday – have seized on the idea. "Spain is one of the countries where workers put in more hours than the European average. But we're not among the most productive countries," said Errejón. "I maintain that working more hours does not mean working better."

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

For the first time in years, someone is building a web browser from scratch:

For more than two decades, building a new web browser from scratch has been practically unheard of. But a small company called Ekioh has its reasons.

The Cambridge, U.K.-based company is developing a browser called Flow, and unlike the vast majority of browsers that have arrived in recent years, it's not based on Google's Chromium or Apple's WebKit open-source code. Instead, Flow is starting with a blank slate and building its own rendering engine. Its goal is to make web-based apps run smoothly even on cheap microcomputers such as the Raspberry Pi.

There's a reason companies don't do this anymore: Experts say building new browsers isn't worth the trouble when anyone can just modify the work that Apple and Google are doing. But if Flow succeeds, it could rethink the way we browse the web and open the door to cheaper gadgets. That at least seems like a goal worth pursuing.

"It's a huge task, but if you want something which is very small and very fast, you typically can't start with one of the other engines," says Stephen Reeder, Ekioh's commercial director.

Original Submission

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

California universities and Elsevier make up, ink big open-access deal:

Two years after a high-profile falling out, the University of California (UC) system and the academic publishing giant Elsevier have patched up differences and agreed on what will be the largest deal for open-access publishing in scholarly journals in North America. The deal is also the world's first such contract that includes Elsevier's highly selective flagship journals Cell and The Lancet.

The deal meets demands made by UC when it suspended negotiations with Elsevier in 2019. It allows UC faculty and students to read articles in almost all of Elsevier's more than 2600 journals, and it enables UC authors to publish articles that they can make open access, or free for anyone to read, by paying a per-article fee. Elsevier says it will discount those open-access fees, and UC says it will subsidize their authors.

UC estimates the new deal will cost its libraries' budget 7% less than what they would have paid had it extended its old contract with Elsevier, which expired in December 2018. UC paid $11 million that year. But the university's total spending on the deal, including money from outside funding sources, could be higher than that, depending on how many articles it publishes open access, Elsevier says.

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:

Adobe Goes After 27-Year Old 'Pirated' Copy of Acrobat Reader 1.0 for MS-DOS * TorrentFreak:

Today, there are many popular PDF readers available but Adobe’s original ‘Acrobat Reader’ is still the go-to software for many. Needless to say, Adobe doesn’t want third-parties to pirate its software, so the company regularly sends out DMCA notices to remove infringing copies.

[...] While this is totally understandable when it comes to newer releases, F-Secure researcher Mikko Hyppönen found out that Adobe’s takedown efforts go far beyond that.

In a recent tweet, Hyppönen mentioned that the software company removed one of his tweets that linked to an old copy of Acrobat Reader for MS-DOS. This software, hosted on WinWorld, came out more than 27-years ago, shortly after the PDF was invented.

The security researcher posted the tweet five years ago and at the time there were no issues. The message was copied a few weeks ago by his own Twitter bot, which reposts all his original tweets five years later.

“They sent a DMCA notice to my bot (@mikko__2016) when it posted that tweet on the tweet’s 5th anniversary. The original tweet is fine,” Hyppönen notes.

While the original tweet is still up, the reposted message was swiftly removed by Twitter. Not just that, the bot’s account was locked as well, which is standard practice nowadays.

Looking more closely at the takedown notice, we see that it was sent by the “brand protection analyst” at Incopro, which is one of Adobe’s anti-piracy partners. It doesn’t provide any further details on the reasons for taking it down, other than an alleged copyright infringement.

Original Submission

Microsoft exchange servers have been under attack in the past few days by a number of groups, including several known "state-sponsored and cyber-criminal hacking groups". They are targeting several zero-day vulnerabilities that have come to light. What I find interesting is the number of groups that all began exploiting these vulnerabilities at the same time. Additional groups have joined in on the hacking attempts, especially after Microsoft issued patches for the vulnerabilities, including ransomware organizations.

Below "the fold" is a roundup of the stories that have been submitted so far.

AnonTechie writes:

Encrypted Messaging App Signal Goes Down in China:

Signal, the popular encrypted messaging app, stopped working in China on Tuesday, according to multiple reports. The app is still available in the Apple App Store in China, according to Reuters, but it's not clear how much longer that might last.

The Chinese government has not made any announcement about Signal being blocked or banned in China, but Signal's website was unavailable in the country starting on Monday. Google's Play Store is unavailable in China, but Android users could previously download the app directly from Signal's website.

Signal did not immediately respond to questions emailed early Tuesday.

Text message verification codes for Signal are not working in China at the moment, according to users who are discussing the outage on Twitter, which would make new sign-ups for the service impossible for anyone using a phone number in mainland China. Some users were still able to access Signal if they turned on a VPN.

Also at The Washington Post.

Signal Home page.

Original Submission

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