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What was highest label on your first car speedometer?

  • 80 mph
  • 88 mph
  • 100 mph
  • 120 mph
  • 150 mph
  • it was in kph like civilized countries use you insensitive clod
  • Other (please specify in comments)

[ Results | Polls ]
Comments:46 | Votes:103

posted by martyb on Wednesday January 19 2022, @10:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-[almost]-all-in-your-head? dept.

More Than Two-Thirds of Adverse COVID-19 Vaccine Events Are Due to Placebo Effect:

The placebo effect is the well-known phenomenon of a person's physical or mental health improving after taking a treatment with no pharmacological therapeutic benefit – a sugar pill, or a syringe full of saline, for example. While the exact biological, psychological, and genetic underpinnings of the placebo effect are not well understood, some theories point to expectations as the primary cause and others argue that non-conscious factors embedded in the patient-physician relationship automatically turn down the volume of symptoms. Sometimes placebo effects can also harm –the so-called "nocebo effect" occurs when a person experiencing unpleasant side effects after taking a treatment with no pharmacological effects. That same sugar pill causing nausea, or that syringe full of saline resulting in fatigue.

In a new meta-analysis of randomized, placebo-controlled COVID-19 vaccine trials, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) compared the rates of adverse events reported by participants who received the vaccines to the rates of adverse events reported by those who received a placebo injection containing no vaccine. While the scientists found significantly more trial participants who received the vaccine reported adverse events, nearly a third of participants who received the placebo also reported at least one adverse event, with headache and fatigue being the most common. The team's findings are published in JAMA Network Open.

"Adverse events after placebo treatment are common in randomized controlled trials," said lead author Julia W. Haas, PhD, an investigator in the Program in Placebo Studies at BIDMC. "Collecting systematic evidence regarding these nocebo responses in vaccine trials is important for COVID-19 vaccination worldwide, especially because concern about side effects is reported to be a reason for vaccine hesitancy."

Haas and colleagues analyzed data from 12 clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines. The 12 trials included adverse effects reports from 22,578 placebo recipients and 22,802 vaccine recipients. After the first injection, more than 35 percent of placebo recipients experienced systemic adverse events – symptoms affecting the entire body, such as fever – with headache and fatigue most common at 19.6 percent and 16.7 percent, respectively. Sixteen percent of placebo recipients reported at least one local event, such as pain at site of injection, redness, or swelling.

In comparison after the first injection, 46 percent of vaccine recipients experienced at least one systemic adverse event and two-thirds of them reported at least one local event. While this group received a pharmacologically active treatment, at least some of their adverse events are attributable to the placebo – or in this case, nocebo – effect, as well given that many of these effects also occurred in the placebo group. Haas and colleagues' analysis suggested that nocebo accounted for 76 percent of all adverse events in the vaccine group and nearly a quarter of all local effects reported.

Journal Reference:
Julia W. Haas, Friederike L. Bender, Sarah Ballou, et al. Frequency of Adverse Events in the Placebo Arms of COVID-19 Vaccine Trials [open], JAMA Network Open (DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.43955)


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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 19 2022, @07:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-has-begun dept.

Now You Can Rent a Robot Worker:

Polar Manufacturing has been making ​metal ​hinges, locks, and brackets ​in south Chicago for more than 100 years. Some of the company's metal presses—hulking great machines that loom over a worker—date from the 1950s. Last year, to meet rising demand amid a shortage of workers, Polar hired its first robot employee.

The robot arm performs a simple, repetitive job: lifting a piece of metal into a press, which then bends the metal into a new shape. And like a person, the robot worker gets paid for the hours it works.

​Jose Figueroa​, who manages Polar's production line, says the robot, which is leased from a company called Formic, costs the equivalent of $8 per hour, compared with a minimum wage of $15 per hour for a human employee. Deploying the robot allowed a human worker to do different work, increasing output, Figueroa says.

"Smaller companies sometimes suffer because they can't spend the capital to invest in new technology," Figueroa says. "We're just struggling to get by with the minimum wage increase."


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posted by martyb on Wednesday January 19 2022, @04:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the ray-tracing-phone dept.

Samsung announces Exynos 2200 with AMD "Xclipse" GPU

Now, the Exynos 2200 is finally official. The headline feature is a new "Samsung Xclipse 920 GPU" that was co-developed by AMD. Samsung says the GPU uses AMD's RDNA 2 architecture, the same as AMD's Radeon desktop GPUs, and will bring "hardware-accelerated ray tracing" to mobile devices.

David Wang, the SVP of AMD's Radeon division, said, "Samsung's Xclipse GPU is the first result of multiple planned generations of AMD RDNA graphics in Exynos SoCs." Previous reports have indicated that Samsung isn't just eyeing smartphones but eventually wants to put together an Apple M1-fighting ARM laptop chip.

The CPU is about what you would expect from a 2022 ARM chip. The 4 nm SoC has one Cortex X2 CPU for single-threaded performance, three Cortex A710 cores, and four low-power Cortex A510 cores, just like Qualcomm's 2022 chip, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. These are all new ARM v9 cores, with the X2 and little cores both being 64-bit only.

Despite finally announcing the Exynos 2200, Samsung's announcement does not put to bed any questions about a troubled development of the Exynos 2200. The press release and product site are both lacking many of the details that are typically disclosed at this point. For instance, Samsung has not made any performance claims about the Exynos 2200 CPU or GPU. If you read through the Exynos 2100 press release from this time last year, you'll see claims like 30 percent better CPU multi-core performance and 40 percent faster graphics.

Leaks have pointed to thermal issues with the Exynos 2200 which could potentially lead to lower performance than its main competitors: Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, MediaTek's Dimensity 9000, and Apple's A15.

Also at The Verge, SamMobile, and Bloomberg.

Related: Samsung Ends Development on Custom ARM Cores, Signals Layoffs at Austin, Texas R&D Center


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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 19 2022, @02:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the umbrella++ dept.

Open Invention Network expands Linux patent protection:

Today, everyone -- yes, even Microsoft -- use Linux and open-source. It's been years since Linux was under attack by SCO for imaginary copyright violations, and then Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer claimed that Linux violated over 200 of Microsoft's patents. So over 15-years ago, the Open Invention Network (OIN) patent consortium was formed to defend Linux against intellectual property (IP) attacks. Even so, Linux and open-source software are still under attack from patent trolls and other attackers. That's where the Open Invention Network (OIN) steps up by expanding its patent non-aggression coverage by updating its Linux System definition.

The OIN, the world's largest patent non-aggression community in history, is adding the following programs and components to the Linux System: .NET, ONNX, tvm, Prometheus, Helm, Notary, Istio, Nix, OpenEmbedded, CoreOS, uClibc-ng, mbed-tls, musl, SPDX, AGL Services, OVN, FuseSoc, Verilator, Flutter, Jasmine, Weex, NodeRED, Eclipse Paho, Californium, Cyclone, and Wakaama, among others. Altogether 337 new software components are being added. This brings the total number of protected packages to 3,730.

Yes, that includes a programming environment, .NET, from Microsoft; Prometheus, the open-source time-series monitoring program; and Helm, the Kubernetes DevOps framework. In short, OIN's protecting parasol against open-source's IP enemies has grown ever wider, ever more protective.

"Linux and open source collaboration continue to thrive as they accelerate the pace of transformation across a spectrum of industries. With this update, we have addressed expansion in key software platforms and projects. Additionally, we have added protection for strategic packages that enable hardware design and embedded applications," said Keith Bergelt, the OIN's CEO.


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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 19 2022, @11:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-hope-that-they-have-backups-no,-of-course-they-won't dept.

Microsoft Warns of Destructive Disk Wiper Targeting Ukraine

Microsoft warns of destructive disk wiper targeting Ukraine:

[...] "All data on the computer is being destroyed, it is impossible to recover it," said a message, written in Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish, that appeared late last week on at least some of the infected systems. "All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst."

[...] Around the same time, Microsoft wrote in a post over the weekend, "destructive" malware with the ability to permanently destroy computers and all data stored on them began appearing on the networks at dozens of government, nonprofit, and information technology organizations, all based in Ukraine. The malware—which Microsoft is calling Whispergate—masquerades as ransomware and demands $10,000 in bitcoin for data to be restored.

But Whispergate lacks the means to distribute decryption keys and provide technical support to victims, traits that are found in virtually all working ransomware deployed in the wild. It also overwrites the master boot record—a part of the hard drive that starts the operating system during bootup.

"Overwriting the MBR is atypical for cybercriminal ransomware," members of the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center wrote in Saturday's post. "In reality, the ransomware note is a ruse and that the malware destructs MBR and the contents of the files it targets. There are several reasons why this activity is inconsistent with cybercriminal ransomware activity observed by MSTIC."

Over the weekend, Serhiy Demedyuk, deputy head of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, told news outlets that preliminary findings from a joint investigation of several Ukrainian state agencies show that a threat actor group known as UNC1151 was likely behind the defacement hack. The group, which researchers at security firm Mandiant have linked to the government of Russian ally Belarus, was behind an influence campaign named Ghostwriter.

Ghostwriter worked by using phishing emails and theft domains that spoof legitimate websites such as Facebook to steal victim credentials. With control of content management systems belonging to news sites and other heavily trafficked properties, UNC1151 "primarily promoted anti-NATO narratives that appeared intended to undercut regional security cooperation in operations targeting Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland," authors of the Mandiant report wrote.

'Russian-backed' Hackers Defaced Ukrainian Websites as Cover for Dangerous Malware Attack

'Russian-backed' hackers defaced Ukrainian websites as cover for dangerous malware attack:

Malicious malware posing as ransomware has been discovered on multiple computer systems in the Ukraine following a hacking attack on Friday that targeted more than 70 government websites.

Hackers exploited a known vulnerability in a content management system used by government agencies and other organisations to deface websites with threatening messages written in Ukrainian, Polish and Russian.

The Ukrainian government has blamed a Russian-influenced hacking group for defacing government websites with messages warning Ukrainians "to expect the worst".

But it emerged over the weekend that Friday's attacks appeared to have been a distraction exercise to divert attention from more serious malware implanted on Ukrainian government and commercial computer systems.

Microsoft disclosed over the weekend that it had detected "destructive malware" on dozens of computer systems belonging to Ukrainian agencies and organisations, including IT companies, that work closely with the Ukrainian government.

The malware, first detected on 13 January 2020, masquerades as ransomware, but is designed to destroy information on infected computer systems without offering victims the ability to recover the data in return for a ransom payment.


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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 19 2022, @08:21AM   Printer-friendly

After six decades, Russia will build its final Proton rocket this year:

Russia's main space corporation, Roscosmos, said it is in the process of building four more Proton rockets before it shuts down production of the venerable booster.

In a news release, Roscosmos said the four rockets are on an assembly line at the Khrunichev State Space Research and Design Center's factory in Moscow's Fili district. After their production is complete, these four rockets will be added to its present inventory of 10 flight-ready Proton-M rockets. (The news release was translated for Ars by Rob Mitchell.)

Russia said it plans to launch these remaining 14 Proton rockets over the next four or five years. During this time frame Russia plans to transition payloads, such as military communications satellites, that would have launched on the Proton booster to the new Angara-A5 rocket.

The final flight of the Proton rocket will bring an end to a long-running era. The first Proton rocket launched in 1965, nearly 57 years ago, amid the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States. Variants of the Proton rocket have launched 426 times, with about a 10 percent failure rate.

Notably, the Proton rocket has launched elements of four separate space stations—Salyut 6, Salyut 7, Mir, and the International Space Station. But the rocket, with a lift capacity of 23.7 metric tons to low Earth orbit, had come under increasing competition for commercial launches. As a result, whereas the Proton booster once launched 10 or 12 times a year, the flight rate has fallen to three or fewer missions a year since 2015.


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posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 19 2022, @05:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the vroooooom dept.

Intel's lowly Celeron G6900 CPU gets overclocked to a staggering 5.3GHz:

Intel's lowly Celeron G6900 processor can be pepped up massively, an expert overclocker has shown us, pushing the Alder Lake chip to a rather staggering 57% above its default clock speed.

This feat was achieved by Der8auer, a well-known German overclocker who has set many previous records when juicing up chips, and managed to get the G6900 CPU to hit 5,338MHz (up from the default base clock speed of 3.4GHz).

What's even more interesting here, aside from a low-end chip blazing away at over 5.3GHz, is that of course this is a non-K processor – only Intel's 'K' model CPUs are officially able to be overclocked. However, with Alder Lake, other models can be ramped up, at least if they're running on a Z690 (high-end) motherboard, using the BCLK unlock capability in the BIOS (BCLK meaning base clock).

Recently Der8auer has also demonstrated overclocking other Alder Lake non-K processors including Intel's Core i5-12400, with seriously impressive results (reaching 5,240MHz across all cores). Plus in this new video, he shows the Intel Core i3-12100 hitting 5,400MHz – about 26% faster than its rated boost.


Original Submission

posted by janrinok on Wednesday January 19 2022, @02:46AM   Printer-friendly

Microsoft Set to Purchase Activision Blizzard in $68.7 Billion Deal

Microsoft set to purchase Activision Blizzard in $68.7 billion deal:

Microsoft this morning announced plans to purchase gaming mega-publisher Activision Blizzard for a record-setting $68.7 billion. The move, when finalized, would bring franchises like Call of Duty, Overwatch, Diablo, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and many more under the umbrella of the Xbox maker.

Today's announcement follows on Microsoft's $7.8 billion acquisition of Bethesda, announced just 15 months ago. After some initial confusion about what that meant for Bethesda's multiplatform titles, it has since become clear that most of Bethesda's biggest franchises, such as Elder Scrolls, will not be appearing on competing consoles such as the PlayStation 5.

In an encouraging sign for fans of Activision Blizzard's multiplatform games, Microsoft said in its announcement that "Activision Blizzard games are enjoyed on a variety of platforms and we plan to continue to support those communities moving forward." But Microsoft and Bethesda executives made similar positive noises about multiplatform titles before the deal was closed, only to shift towards Bethesda exclusivity after the deal was finalized.

Microsoft notes in its announcement that Activision Blizzard games would become a part of its Game Pass program, which currently enjoys 25 million subscribers. "With Activision Blizzard's nearly 400 million monthly active players in 190 countries and three billion-dollar franchises, this acquisition will make Game Pass one of the most compelling and diverse lineups of gaming content in the industry," the company said. "Upon close, Microsoft will have 30 internal game development studios, along with additional publishing and esports production capabilities."

Microsoft Plans to Buy Activision Blizzard for Nearly $70bn

Microsoft plans to buy Activision Blizzard for nearly $70bn:

This deal is the biggest in gaming history and comes a year after Microsoft bought another influential gaming company Bethesda for $7.5bn.

Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft said: "We're investing deeply in world-class content, community and the cloud to usher in a new era of gaming that puts players and creators first and makes gaming safe, inclusive and accessible to all."

Activision Blizzard has studios around the word with nearly 10,000 employees.

It has been dealing with accusations of a toxic work-place culture and claims of sexual harassment in recent months.

MS set to buy the competition, Activision-Blizzard for $68.7 billion in cash. I guess this is what corporations with too much cash on hand do, go on a shopping spree.

I wonder if this means World of Warcraft will now come to the Xbox and if the sub fee will be covered by the Xbox Game Pass...


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posted by martyb on Tuesday January 18 2022, @11:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the Pew!-Pew!-Pew! dept.

FedEx Asks Permission to Install Anti-Missile Lasers on Its Cargo Jet:

FedEx has asked the US Federal Aviation Administration if it could install anti-missile lasers on cargo jets, according to a request filed earlier this month. The FAA request is set to be published on the public register next week.

Heat-seeking missiles detect and target heat from cargo jet engines, and because these planes are less maneuverable that a fighter jet, they're hard to shake off. Gizmodo reports that anti-missile lasers act like a distraction, shining an infrared laser directly at the missile to disrupt its ability to track a heat signature.

Although it may seem out of left field, supply chain issues have been causing food and product shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Last year, hackers even deployed ransomware attacks on a major agricultural services provider. With those cyberpunk logistics challenges in mind, FedEx's application makes a little more sense.

"In recent years, in several incidents abroad, civilian aircraft were fired upon by man-portable air defense systems," the application letter reads.

[...] When FedEx first tested similar equipment back in 2008, CBS reported the lasers were eye-safe. In addition, Gizmodo reports that the current application includes new features, reporting and important safety information for airline crew. The lasers really shouldn't pose a problem to civilians on the ground, then, and it makes us wonder — should all passenger planes have this tech?


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday January 18 2022, @09:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the why-do-we-need-artificial-intellegence-anyway dept.

Israeli researchers train fish to drive robotic car:

A goldfish has successfully driven a robotic car, claims new research from Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, discovered as part of an experiment to explore animal behavior.

The researchers wanted to know whether animals' innate navigational abilities are universal or are restricted to their home environments. Taking the premise to the extreme, they designed a set of wheels under a goldfish tank with a camera system to record and translate the fish's movements into forward and back and side-to-side directions to the wheels. By doing so, they discovered that a goldfish's navigational ability supersedes its watery environs.

Their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Behavioural Brain Research. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166432821005994?via%3Dihub

The researchers tested whether the fish was really navigating by placing a clearly visible target on the wall opposite the tank. After a few days of training, the fish navigated to the target. Moreover, they were able to do so even if they were interrupted in the middle by hitting a wall, and they were not fooled by false targets placed by the researchers.

Link includes a video that is pretty convincing. The fish does at least as good of a job as the early qualifying attempts I saw for the first Grand Challenge Darpa competition.


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posted by martyb on Tuesday January 18 2022, @06:34PM   Printer-friendly

A huge, kilometer-wide asteroid will pass by Earth today:

It will pass within 1.2 million miles of our planet, moving at 47,344 miles per hour, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, which tracks potentially hazardous comets and asteroids that could collide with our planet.

The approaching asteroid is known as 7482 (1994 PC1), and it was discovered in 1994, according to NASA.

Nobody expects 7482 (1994 PC1) to hit Earth, but it's the closest the asteroid will come for the next two centuries, according to NASA projections. The asteroid is expected to be at its nearest to our planet at 4.51 p.m. ET.

[...] It won't be the largest asteroid ever to sweep past Earth. That honor belongs to the asteroid 3122 Florence (1981 ET3), which flew by and missed colliding with Earth on September 1, 2017. That asteroid is estimated to be between 2.5 miles and 5.5miles wide, and it will make another pass on September 2, 2057.

[...] While the asteroid is unlikely to be visible today with the naked eye, amateur astronomers with a small telescope should be able to spot it, according to the website EarthSky.com.


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday January 18 2022, @03:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the have-you-tried-turning-it-off-and-back-on-again...Oh...wait. dept.

World's first MRAM-based in-memory computing:

Samsung Electronics today announced its demonstration of the world's first in-memory computing based on MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory).

[...] In the standard computer architecture, data is stored in memory chips and data computing is executed in separate processor chips.

In contrast, in-memory computing is a new computing paradigm that seeks to perform both data storage and data computing in a memory network. Since this scheme can process a large amount of data stored within the memory network itself without having to move the data, and also because the data processing in the memory network is executed in a highly parallel manner, power consumption is substantially reduced. In-memory computing has thus emerged as one of the promising technologies to realize next-generation low-power AI semiconductor chips.

For this reason, research on in-memory computing has been intensely pursued worldwide. [...] By contrast, it has so far been difficult to use MRAM—another type of non-volatile memory—for in-memory computing despite MRAM's merits such as operation speed, endurance and large-scale production. This difficulty stems from the low resistance of MRAM, due to which MRAM cannot enjoy the power reduction advantage when used in the standard in-memory computing architecture.

The Samsung Electronics researchers have [...] succeeded in developing an MRAM array chip that demonstrates in-memory computing, by replacing the standard, 'current-sum' in-memory computing architecture with a new, 'resistance sum' in-memory computing architecture, which addresses the problem of small resistances of individual MRAM devices.

Samsung's research team subsequently tested the performance of this MRAM in-memory computing chip by running it to perform AI computing. The chip achieved an accuracy of 98% in classification of hand-written digits and a 93% accuracy in detecting faces from scenes.

[...] "In-memory computing draws similarity to the brain in the sense that in the brain, computing also occurs within the network of biological memories, or synapses, the points where neurons touch one another," said Dr. Seungchul Jung, the first author of the paper. "In fact, while the computing performed by our MRAM network for now has a different purpose from the computing performed by the brain, such solid-state memory network may in the future be used as a platform to mimic the brain by modeling the brain's synapse connectivity."

Journal Reference:
Seungchul Jung, Hyungwoo Lee, Sungmeen Myung, et al. A crossbar array of magnetoresistive memory devices for in-memory computing, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04196-6)


Original Submission

posted by martyb on Tuesday January 18 2022, @01:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ψ dept.

Astronomers may have found a second Neptune-size exomoon hidden in the retired Kepler space telescope's data

Despite an explosion of exoplanet discoveries since the 1990s, astronomers have not confirmed the discovery of a single exomoon. In fact, only around a dozen exomoon candidates have been put forward up to now.

In 2018, David Kipping (Columbia University) and Alex Teachey (now at Academia Sinica, Taiwan) were the first, tentatively reporting a possible Neptune-radius moon about 7,800 light-years from Earth: Kepler-1625 b-i. Now, the astronomers and other colleagues have announced the discovery of another exomoon, published January 14th in Nature Astronomy. However, just as before, they urge both caution and the need for further observations.

The putative exomoon, designated Kepler-1708 b-i, was found 5,700 light-years away, orbiting a Jupiter-size planet around a star similar to the Sun. The planet is on a Mars-like orbit, at about 1.6 astronomical units (a.u.). Its moon orbits about 12 planetary radii away, similar to Europa's distance from Jupiter. Unlike Europa, though, Kepler-1708 b-i is huge, about 2.5 times Earth's size. This means the moon would be unlike any satellite in our solar system.

Journal Reference:
David Kipping, Steve Bryson, Chris Burke, et al. An exomoon survey of 70 cool giant exoplanets and the new candidate Kepler-1708 b-i [open], Nature Astronomy (DOI: 10.1038/s41550-021-01539-1)

Yet another observation to add onto JWST's schedule.

Also at Scientific American.

Previously: First Exo-Moon Discovered?
First Known Exomoon May Have Been Detected: Kepler 1625b i
New Evidence Supports Existence of Neptune-Sized Exomoon Orbiting Kepler-1625b
Exomoon Confirmation Remains Elusive


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posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 18 2022, @10:21AM   Printer-friendly

The UK Government is reportedly preparing a PR blitz against end-to-end encryption:

Meta recently said that it would implement end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger and Instagram by 2023, despite strong opposition from governments in the UK and elsewhere. However, the UK Home Office is reportedly planning an ad campaign to mobilize public opinion against end-to-end encryption using what critics called "scaremongering" tactics, according to a report from Rolling Stone.

The UK government plans to team up with charities and law enforcement agencies on a public relations blitz created by M&C Saatchi advertising agency, the report states. The aim of the campaign is to relay a message that end-to-end encryption could hamper efforts to curb child exploitation online. 

"We have engaged M&C Saatchi to bring together the many organizations who share our concerns about the impact end-to-end encryption would have on our ability to keep children safe," a Home Office spokesperson told Rolling Stone in a statement. The government has allocated £534,000 ($730,500) for the blitz, according to a letter sent from the Home Office in response to a freedom of information request. 


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posted by janrinok on Tuesday January 18 2022, @07:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the common-sense dept.

CTA announces availability of Ripple:

Officials at the Consumer Technology Association have announced the development and availability of Ripple, an open radar API standard. The API is being presented as an industry standard for the interoperability of hardware and software systems that make use of small radar devices or chips.

CTA is the organization that puts on the Consumer Electronics Show each year—it did not develop the API, Google did. They, along with Ford Motor Company, Blumio, Texas Instruments, Infineon and NXP are pushing the new API to standardize the way that devices that use radar communicate and work with one another.

[...] The general idea behind tiny radar systems is that they are able to detect the presence or absence of people, objects and movement. These devices could be used to determine if someone is watching a movie on their TV, for example, or whether someone's chest is rising and falling as they sleep. It could also be used to help a smart car determine if a driver is falling asleep or if they are paying attention to the road rather than their phone.

The point of a standardized API for small radar systems is seamless cross-platform interoperability. These features could become important if device makers begin installing radar devices in IoT devices. As an example, appropriately functioning devices from different makers that note when a person enters a room and turns on a light and those that detect intruders could mean the difference between the police arriving unnecessarily or a good night's sleep.


Original Submission