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upstart writes:

NYPD secretly spent $159 million on surveillance tech:

The New York City Police Department has spent over $159 million on surveillance systems and maintenance since 2007 without public oversight, according to newly released documents. The Legal Aid Society (LAS) and the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) obtained the documents from the NYPD, which include contracts with vendors. They show that the NYPD has spent millions on facial recognition, predictive policing tech and other surveillance systems.

The NYPD made the purchases through a Special Expenses Fund. It didn't need to gain the approval of the NYC Council or other city officials before signing the contracts, as Wired reports.

From Wired:

Last year, STOP and other privacy groups successfully pushed for the passage of the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act, which required the NYPD to reveal information about the surveillance tools it uses. After the POST Act's passage, the current comptroller, Scott Stringer, ended the agreement, opening the door for the Legal Aid Society and STOP to obtain and publish the contracts.

"New Yorkers deserve transparency, accountability, and oversight for all taxpayer dollars," Stringer said in a statement. "By shedding light on how taxpayer dollars are spent, we can continue to make government more open and accessible and build public trust."

In a statement, a spokesperson for the NYPD said, "No police department or federal agency has gone to the level of depth and transparency on law enforcement tools used in the field that the NYPD did in its POST Act disclosures."

The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act: A Resource Page

Related:
Victory! New York's City Council Passes the POST Act

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Sci-Hub Pledges Open Source & AI Alongside Crypto Donation Drive

Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Elbakyan has launched a donation drive to ensure the operations and development of the popular academic research platform. For safety reasons, donations can only be made in cryptocurrencies but the pledges include a drive to open source the project and the introduction of artificial intelligence to discover new hypotheses.

[...] A new campaign launched by Elbakyan on Saturday hopes to encourage people to contribute to the site's future, promising "dramatic improvements" over the next few years in return.

In addition to offering enhanced search features and a mobile app, Sci-Hub is pledging developments that include the open sourcing of the project. Also of interest is the pledge to introduce an artificial intelligence component that should make better use of the masses of knowledge hosted by Sci-Hub.

"Sci-Hub engine will [be] powered by artificial intelligence. Neural Networks will read scientific texts, extract ideas and make inferences and discover new hypotheses," Elbakyan reveals.

The overall goal of the next few years is to boost content availability too, expanding from hosting "the majority of research articles" available today to include "any scientific document ever published."

Related: Sci-Hub Bounces from TLD to TLD
Sci-Hub Proves That Piracy Can be Dangerously Useful
Paywall: A Documentary About the Movement for Open-Access Science Publishing
Swedish ISP Punishes Elsevier for Forcing It to Block Sci-Hub by Also Blocking Elsevier
Library Genesis Seeding Project Helps to Decentralize Archive of Scientific Knowledge
Scientists to be Heard in High-Profile Publisher Lawsuit Against Sci-Hub in India

Original Submission

KilroySmith writes:

Not going anytime soon

Today, Boeing informed NASA that the company will destack its CST-100 Starliner from the Atlas V rocket and return the spacecraft to the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility
(C3PF) for deeper-level troubleshooting of four propulsion system valves that remain closed after last Tuesday's scrubbed launch.

Boeing's Starliner is a human-rated space capsule built for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Its initial test flight in December 2019 (OFT-1) was partially successful, but due to software errors was unable to dock with the International Space Station. This was to be its second flight test (OFT-2), but less than 24 hours before launch 13 valves in the propulsion system of the capsule were found to be stuck; after several days of "applying mechanical, electrical and thermal techniques to prompt the valves open", seven (and now nine) of the thirteen have been restored to operation. But the remaining four are being recalcitrant, and more invasive work will need to be done.

Previously: Boeing's Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 Mission Runs into Thruster, Scheduling Issues

Original Submission

TheMightyChickadee writes:

News from Newsweek:

An elusive "shape-shifting" fish was recently spotted off the coast of California in a rare sighting.

On August 6, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) tweeted a video of a whalefish.

"A whalefish was spotted last week with ROV Doc Ricketts," the research institute tweeted. "This whalefish [order Cetomimiformes] was encountered by [Steven Haddock's] team on their R/V Western Flyer expedition 2,013 meters deep offshore of Monterey Bay."

The video shows a bright orange fish swimming in the dark depths of the ocean.

[...] A mystery, indeed. In 2010, the Smithsonian reported the whalefish was first discovered in 1895. As one might have guessed, scientists named their newest specimen after its "whale-like appearance."

AnonTechie writes:

Sex with robots: How should lawmakers respond?:

Advancements in technology have resulted in the design of hyper–realistic, Wi-Fi–connected, programmable sex robots that can mimic human responses, but what do these developments mean for how we regulate interactions with "sexbots" in the future?

In a new article in the The Bulletin: The Law Society of SA [south Australia] Journal, Flinders University law researchers analyzed the factors Australian lawmakers will have to consider when they weigh up whether it should be legal to import, own and use sexbots that resemble human adults.

[...] A recent study into the therapeutic benefits of sex robots found the top three suggestions for the use of robots were for patients with: social anxiety (50%), people who do not have a partner but still want a sex life without resorting to fleeting acquaintances or prostitution (50%) and premature ejaculation (47%), according to sex therapists.

[...] “Legislators will have to balance competing and complex individual and public interests which pose new ethical, regulatory and legal challenges because of advancements in technology.”

“While no Australian legislation currently regulates or prohibits sexual intercourse with robots, there are regulations on child-like sex dolls which have been addressed by the Commonwealth, South Australia and Queensland. These statutory provisions may guide any future laws on the use of adult sex robots but there are new factors which have to be considered.”

[ARTICLE]: Law Society of SA Journal

Should the government get involved in this matter?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Exclusive: Apple's child protection features spark concern within its own ranks -sources

A backlash over Apple's move to scan U.S. customer phones and computers for child sex abuse images has grown to include employees speaking out internally, a notable turn in a company famed for its secretive culture, as well as provoking intensified protests from leading technology policy groups.

Apple employees have flooded an Apple internal Slack channel with more than 800 messages on the plan announced a week ago, workers who asked not to be identified told Reuters. Many expressed worries that the feature could be exploited by repressive governments looking to find other material for censorship or arrests, according to workers who saw the days-long thread.

Past security changes at Apple have also prompted concern among employees, but the volume and duration of the new debate is surprising, the workers said. Some posters worried that Apple is damaging its leading reputation for protecting privacy.

Apple says it will refuse gov't demands to expand photo-scanning beyond CSAM:

upstart writes:

US legislation aims to break grip on app stores:

A bill introduced on Wednesday by US senators seeks to loosen the grip Apple and Google have on their lucrative online shops for apps and other digital content.

The measure, backed by Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Amy Klobuchar and Republican Marsha Blackburn, would have to make its way through Congress to become law. [edited for readability -- Ed.]

The bill would make it illegal for app store operators to require use of their own payment systems for transactions, a tactic that lets Apple and Google collect commissions on sales at their respective shops.

The legislation also calls for app store operators who also control device operating systems, as do Apple and Google, to allow users ways to get apps from places other than their stores.

"As mobile technologies have become essential to our daily lives, it has become clear that a few gatekeepers control the app marketplace, wielding incredible power over which apps consumers can access," Klobuchar said in a release.

Also at Ars Technica, CNBC, Reuters and MarketWatch.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Dolphins Get 40s Flab, Too:

A Duke University-led study finds that bottlenose dolphins burn calories at a lower rate as they get older, just like we do.

It's the first time scientists have measured an age-related metabolic slowdown in another large-bodied species besides humans, said first author Rebecca Rimbach, postdoctoral associate in evolutionary anthropology at Duke.

Rimbach has studied energy expenditure and other aspects of physiology in animals ranging from mice to monkeys. But data on the inner workings of marine mammals such as dolphins and whales have been scant, she says. That's because these ocean dwellers are notoriously difficult to recapture for repeat measurements.

[...] The researchers studied 10 bottlenose dolphins aged 10 to 45 living at two marine mammal facilities, Dolphin Research Center in Florida and Dolphin Quest in Hawaii.

To measure their average daily metabolic rate, the researchers used the "doubly labeled water method." Used to measure energy expenditure in humans since the 1980s, it's a method that involves getting the animals to drink a few ounces of water with naturally occurring "heavy" forms of hydrogen and oxygen added, and then tracking how long the animals take to flush them out.

[...] The researchers expected dolphins to have revved-up metabolisms, since dolphins are warm-blooded just like people, and keeping warm requires more energy in water than in air.

But despite living in a watery world, they found that bottlenose dolphins burn 17% less energy per day than expected for a marine mammal of their size.

The scientists also noted some of the same signs of metabolic aging common in people. The oldest dolphins in the study, both in their 40s, used 22% to 49% fewer calories each day than expected for their body weight. And similar to humans, more of those calories ended up as fat rather than muscle. Dolphins in their 40s had body fat percentages that were 2.5 times higher than their under-20 counterparts.

Journal Reference:
Rimbach, Rebecca, Amireh, Ahmad, Allen, Austin, et al. Total energy expenditure of bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) of different ages, Journal of Experimental Biology (DOI: 10.1242/jeb.242218)

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

Russia’s space program just threw a NASA astronaut under the bus:

Russia's state-owned news service, TASS, has published an extraordinarily defamatory article about NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor. The publication claims that Auñón-Chancellor had an emotional breakdown in space, then damaged a Russian spacecraft in order to return early. This, of course, is a complete fabrication.

The context for the article is the recent, near-disastrous docking of the Russian Nauka science module with the International Space Station. The TASS article attempts to rebut criticism in US publications (including Ars Technica) that covered the incident and raised questions about the future of the Roscosmos-NASA partnership in space.

One of a dozen rebuttals in the TASS article concerns a 2018 incident—a 2 mm breach in the orbital module of the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle docked with the International Space Station. Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst, and NASA's Auñón-Chancellor had flown to the station inside this Soyuz in June. The leak was discovered in late August.

Previously:
(2020-09-05) Source of International Space Station Leak Still Not Found, NASA Says
(2018-12-13) Cosmonauts Cut Into Soyuz Docked at the ISS During Nearly 8-Hour Spacewalk
(2018-11-03) Roscosmos Completes Investigation into October Soyuz Failure, Finds Assembly Issue
(2018-10-03) Controversy Over ISS Leak Continues, Spacewalk Planned for November
(2018-09-14) NASA and Roscosmos Release Joint Statement on ISS Leak Amid Rumors
(2018-09-06) Russian Space Chief Vows to Find "Full Name" of Technician Who Caused ISS Leak

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Facial recognition AI helps save multibillion dollar grape crop:

A radical collaboration between a biologist and an engineer is supercharging efforts to protect grape crops. The technology they've developed, using robotics and AI to identify grape plants infected with a devastating fungus, will soon be available to researchers nationwide working on a wide array of plant and animal research.

The biologist, Lance Cadle-Davidson, Ph.D. '03, an adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS), is working to develop grape varieties that are more resistant to powdery mildew, but his lab's research was bottlenecked by the need to manually assess thousands of grape leaf samples for evidence of infection.

Powdery mildew, a fungus that attacks many plants including wine and table grapes, leaves sickly white spores across leaves and fruit and costs grape growers worldwide billions of dollars annually in lost fruit and fungicide costs.

Cadle-Davidson is also a research plant pathologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS). He works in the Grape Genetics Research Unit in Geneva, New York, and his team developed prototypes of imaging robots that could scan grape leaf samples automatically – a process called high-throughput phenotyping – through the USDA-ARS funded VitisGen2 grape breeding project and in partnership with the Light and Health Research Center. This partnership led to the creation of a robotic camera they named "BlackBird."

upstart writes:

Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg join forces to mine for raw materials in Greenland:

KoBold Metals, a mineral exploration company backed by Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Ray Dalio, has entered into a joint venture with London-based mining firm Bluejay to search for nickel, copper, cobalt and platinum on the world’s largest island.

KoBold uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to decide where to purchase land, what type of field data to collect and where to drill to find new ore deposits.

The companies announced Monday KoBold will spend $15 million through 2024 to help Bluejay locate natural resources as part of its Disko-Nuussuaq project in Central West Greenland. KoBold will put up the funds in exchange for a 51 percent stake in the project.

Bluejay says studies have shown the region has geological similarities to Russia’s Norilsk region, a large producer of nickel and palladium.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

New BIOS updates will make Windows 11 support less annoying on custom-built PCs:

If you're using a pre-built desktop or laptop PC made within the last three or four years, Windows 11's sometimes confusing, sometimes contentious security-oriented new system requirements won't be a problem for you—all of the security features Microsoft is requiring for the new operating system should be turned on by default. The change presents a bigger problem for people who build their own computers (or who have had computers built for them), since features like the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) are often disabled by default.

[...] Asus is taking the most comprehensive approach, with BIOS updates either available or "under testing" for the vast majority of Intel and AMD motherboards made within the last three or four years (300-, 400-, and 500-series chipsets from both Intel and AMD are broadly supported, covering most 8th-generation and newer Intel CPUs and all of AMD's Ryzen processors). But ASRock has released TPM-enabling BIOS updates for a handful of its newer motherboards as well, and we'd expect other motherboard-makers to follow suit in the next few months. We've contacted ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI to see if they have any information to share and will update if they do.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

UK launches £4m fund to run fibre optic cables through water pipes:

Broadband UK launches £4m fund to run fibre optic cables through water pipes

The [UK] government has launched a £4m fund to back projects trialling running fibre optic broadband cables through water pipes to help connect hard-to-reach homes without digging up roads.

The money will also be used to test out monitors in pipes that can help water companies identify and repair leaks more quickly. About a fifth of water put into public supply every day is lost via leaks and it is hoped that sensors could help deliver water companies' commitment to reduce water loss by half.

Infrastructure works, in particular installing new ducts and poles, can make up as much as four-fifths of the costs to industry of building new gigabit-capable broadband networks, the government said.

The project is designed to help cut those costs, and is part of a plan to improve broadband and mobile signals in rural areas.

[...] Although more than 96% of UK premises already have access to superfast broadband, providing download speeds of at least 24 Mbps, according to the government, just 12% of the UK has access to faster speeds via full-fibre broadband.

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Highest recorded temperature of 48.8C in Europe apparently logged in Sicily:

The highest temperature in European history appears to have been recorded in Italy during a heatwave sweeping the country, with early reports suggesting a high of 48.8C (119.85F).

If this is accepted by the World Meteorological Organisation it will break the previous European record of 48C (118.4F) set in Athens in 1977. The temperature was measured at a monitoring station in Syracuse, Sicily, and confirmed soon after by the island’s meteorological authorities.

The finding comes amid a fierce heatwave stretching across the Mediterranean to Tunisia and Algeria. Fires have blazed across much of the region for more than a week. Italy’s government has declared a state of emergency. Turkey and Greece have also been hit by devastating conflagrations.

Trevor Mitchell, a meteorologist from the UK Met Office, said: “The Società Meteorologica Italiana say that the temperature report of 48.8C is genuine. However, with potential records such as these there is typically a process of verification before they can be declared officially.

“Sicily has been experiencing a heatwave in the last few days. The foehn effect [a change from wet, cold conditions on one side of a mountain to warmer, drier conditions on the other] in the lee of the mountains to the west of Syracuse is likely to have assisted in generating the 48.8C observed there today.”

Original Submission

upstart writes:

Aluminum cans slowly replace plastics to tackle marine pollution:

A number of Japanese beverage vendors have recently moved to abandon the use of plastic bottles, replacing them with aluminum cans in a bid to combat marine plastic pollution, wreaking havoc with the ecosystem.

All 12 teas and soft drinks sold by Ryohin Keikaku Co., operator of retail brand Muji, have been provided in aluminum cans since April after data showed the rate of "horizontal recycling," which allows for the reuse of materials in a comparable function, was substantially higher for such cans compared to plastic bottles.

The rate of horizontal recycling for aluminum cans stands at 71.0% compared to 24.3% for plastic bottles, according to the Japan Aluminium Association and the Council for PET Bottle Recycling.

[...] Meanwhile, aluminum cans can better prevent their contents from deteriorating as their opacity keeps light from damaging them. Ryohin Keikaku introduced those cans also to cut down on wasted drinks.

By switching to aluminum cans, expiry dates for soft drinks were extended by 90 days to 270 days, according to the retailer.

Original Submission