Slashdot

Air pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil was responsible for 8.7 million deaths globally in 2018, a staggering one in five of all people who died that year, new research has found. From a report: Countries with the most prodigious consumption of fossil fuels to power factories, homes and vehicles are suffering the highest death tolls, with the study finding more than one in 10 deaths in both the US and Europe were caused by the resulting pollution, along with nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia, which includes China. Death rates in South America and Africa were significantly lower. The enormous death toll is higher than previous estimates and surprised even the study's researchers. "We were initially very hesitant when we obtained the results because they are astounding, but we are discovering more and more about the impact of this pollution," said Eloise Marais, a geographer at University College London and a study co-author. "It's pervasive. The more we look for impacts, the more we find." The 8.7 million deaths in 2018 represent a "key contributor to the global burden of mortality and disease," states the study, which is the result of collaboration between scientists at Harvard University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London. The death toll exceeds the combined total of people who die globally each year from smoking tobacco plus those who die of malaria.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook is being sued for "losing control" of the data of about a million users in England and Wales. From a report: The alleged failings were revealed in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where harvested data was used for advertising during elections. Journalist Peter Jukes, leading the action, claims his data was compromised. Facebook told BBC News there was "no evidence" UK or EU users' data had been transferred to Cambridge Analytica. But the case against the technology giant, expected to last for at least three years, will argue a "loss of control" over users' personal data warrants individual compensation. The harvesting of Facebook users' personal information by third-party apps was at the centre of the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal, exposed in 2018. Cambridge Analytica's app on Facebook had harvested the data of people who interacted with it -- and that of friends who had not given consent.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

According to a researcher, favicons can be a security vulnerability that could let websites track your movement and bypass VPNs, incognito browsing status, and other traditional methods of cloaking your movement online. From a report: The tracking method is called a Supercookie, and it's the work of German software designer Jonas Strehle. "Supercookie uses favicons to assign a unique identifier to website visitors. Unlike traditional tracking methods, this ID can be stored almost persistently and cannot be easily cleared by the user," Strehle said on his Github. "The tracking method works even in the browser's incognito mode and is not cleared by flushing the cache, closing the browser or restarting the system, using a VPN or installing AdBlockers." Strehle's Github explained that he became interested in the idea of using favicons to track users after reading a research paper [PDF] on the topic from the University of Illinois at Chicago. "The complexity and feature-rich nature of modern browsers often lead to the deployment of seemingly innocuous functionality that can be readily abused by adversaries," the paper explained. "In this paper we introduce a novel tracking mechanism that misuses a simple yet ubiquitous browser feature: favicons." To be clear, this is a proof-of-concept and not something that Strehle has found out in the wild.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A piece of virtual land on blockchain marketplace and gaming platform Axie Infinity has just sold for a record-breaking sum in cryptocurrency. From a report: At around 23:00 UTC on Monday, one of the platform's newest community members, "Flying Falcon," purchased the digital estate of nine adjacent Genesis blocks for 888.25 ether, roughly $1.5 million at the time. The transaction marks the largest non-fungible token (NFT) transaction of all time, as tracked on-chain by crypto collectibles data site NonFungible. Formerly, the "Formula 1 Grand Prix de Monaco 2020 1A" NFT from F1 Delta Time held the record at $224,111 in ETH, the site told CoinDesk. "As Genesis land plots are the rarest and best-positioned plots in Axie Infinity they were a natural fit for my thesis," Flying Falcon told CoinDesk via email. "What we're witnessing is a historic moment; the rise of digital nations with their own system of clearly delineated, irrevocable property rights." While the "epic 9" plot is by far the NFT sector's largest sale to date, there are roughly three other plots going for much higher: from 100 to 10,000 ETH.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. Navy has patents on weird and little understood technology. According to patents filed by the Navy, it is working on a compact fusion reactor that could power cities, an engine that works using "inertial mass reduction," and a "hybrid aerospace-underwater craft." From a report: Dubbed the "UFO patents," The War Zone has reported that the Navy had to build prototypes of some of the outlandish tech to prove it worked. Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a number of different departments in the Navy, including the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAVAIR/NAWCAD) and the Strategic Systems Programs. (SSP) The SSP mission, according to its website, is to "provide credible and affordable strategic solutions to the warfighter." It's responsible for developing the technology behind the Trident class nuclear missiles launched from Submarines. The patents all build on each other, but at their core is something Pais called the "Pais Effect." This is the idea that, "controlled motion of electrically charged matter via accelerated vibration and/or accelerated spin subjected to smooth yet rapid acceleration transients, in order to generate extremely high energy/high intensity electromagnetic fields."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is developing a new Echo device with a large touchscreen that attaches to the wall and serves as a smart home control panel, video chat device and media player, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the plans. From a report: The company's Lab126 hardware division is designing the device to be a digital command center, showing users upcoming calendar events, controlling accessories like lights and locks, and playing music and video. It would include Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and microphones and a camera for video conferencing, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. The product would compete with professionally installed smart home control screens from the likes of Control4 as well as Apple's iPads framed into walls and even Amazon's own Echo Show used with a third-party wall mount. Amazon is considering multiple variations, with screens of either 10 or 13 inches in size. A 10-inch display would be on par with the current Echo Show, while a 13-inch model would be Amazon's largest device with a display. The company plans to launch it either at the end of this year or the end of 2022, the people said. Prices ranging from $200 to $250 have been discussed internally, though the plans are still early and could change or be scrapped altogether.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New reader allquixotic writes: Since late January, most users running a pre-installed Lenovo image of Windows 10 has been bitten by a bug in Lenovo's System Update Service (SUService.exe) causing it to constantly occupy a CPU thread. This was noticed by many ThinkPad and IdeaPad users as an unexpected increase in fan noise, but many desktop users might not notice the problem. I'm submitting this story to Slashdot because Lenovo does not provide an official support venue for their software, and the problem has persisted for several weeks with no indication of a patch forthcoming. While this bug continues to persist, anyone with a preinstalled Lenovo image of Windows 10 will have greatly reduced battery life on a laptop, and greatly increased power consumption in any case. As a thought experiment, if this causes 1 million systems to increase their idle power consumption by 40 watts, this software bug is currently wasting 40 megawatts, or about 1/20th the output of a typical commercial power station. On my ThinkPad P15, this bug actually wastes 80 watts of power, so the indication is that 40 watts per system is a very conservative number. Lenovo's official forums and unofficial reddit pages have seen several threads pop up since late January with confused users noticing the issue, but so far Lenovo is yet to issue an official statement. Users have recommended uninstalling the Lenovo System Update Service as a workaround, but that won't stop this power virus from eating up megawatts of power around the world for those who don't notice this power virus's impact on system performance.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Indian government might soon allow companies to go ahead with a four-day work week. The Union Ministry of Labour and Employment is working on new labour codes which will make way for a three-day weekend, but will keep the working hours at 48 hours a week, which means employees might be subject to long days. "Companies will have to give three days' of paid leaves and 12 hours of work per day to their employees with the consent of the workers. We are not forcing employees or employers. It gives flexibility. It's an enabling provision in sync with the changing work culture. We have tried to make some changes. We have tried to give flexibility in working days," said Labour and Employment Ministry Secretary Apurva Chandra.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sometimes one screen isn't enough and you need two. Sometimes even two doesn't get the job done, and you need three. If your job requires seven screens, a UK firm now has you covered. Gizmodo reports: The Aurora 7 laptop seems lifted straight from the imagination of a Hollywood prop builder working on a bad hacker flick. But with seven foldout screens, there's little chance anyone could actually use this beast on their laps. It's a mobile transforming workstation for those who need more screen real estate than they have room for monitors. Created by a UK company called Expanscape, the Aurora 7 is very much just a prototype at this stage in the game (as is evident by the extensive use of 3D-printed parts), but it's designed to be true mobile workstation for everyone from developers to content creators to even well-funded gamers wanting a more immersive experience from a computer they don't have to leave at home. Powered by an Intel i9 9900K processor backed by 64GB of DDR4 RAM and an NVIDIA GTX 1060 series graphics card, the Aurora 7 also comes with 2TB of hard drive storage and an additional 2.5 TB of SSD storage, plus all the ports you could ever need to expand its capacity even further. But the star of the show is the complicated mosaic of screens which includes four 17.3-inch 4K (3840 x 2160) LCDs -- two in portrait mode and two in landscape -- as well as three smaller 7-inch screens all pushing 1920 x 1200 pixels, with one located in the laptop's wrist rest. The laptop has a battery life of one hour. No word on pricing or when it starts shipping.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A team of World Health Organization scientists said on Tuesday in China that the coronavirus probably first spread to humans through an intermediate animal host and was "extremely unlikely" the result of a lab accident. The New York Times: The findings, delivered after 12 days of field work by the team visiting Wuhan, China, were the first step in what will most likely be a painstaking process to trace the origins of the global pandemic, a question that is critical to helping prevent a recurrence. "All the work that has been done on the virus and trying to identify its origin continue to point toward a natural reservoir," said Dr. Peter K. Ben Embarek, a food safety scientist with the W.H.O., who is leading the team of experts, speaking at a news conference in Wuhan, the city where the coronavirus was first discovered late in 2019. Dr. Embarek dismissed the idea that the virus might have emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, a theory that has gained currency among some officials and experts in the United States and elsewhere. "It was very unlikely that anything could escape from such a place," he said, citing safety protocols. The W.H.O. experts largely focused their comments on the scientific aspects of their mission. But the inquiry has been in many ways overshadowed by politics. The Chinese government has continued to suggest that the virus may have originated overseas, an idea that many scientists discount. Chinese officials on Tuesday used the news conference to continue to promote this theory, arguing that the search for the origin of the virus should focus on places outside China. The investigation will "not be restricted to any location," said Liang Wannian, who led the team of Chinese scientists assisting in the W.H.O. mission. The W.H.O. experts at the three-hour news conference did not challenge the statements by the Chinese officials. They pledged to examine reports of early cases of the virus outside China. They also called for more research into the animals that were sold at a sprawling market in Wuhan where some of the first cases of the virus were detected. For the W.H.O., the visit served as a chance to dispel criticism that it is too deferential to China.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Polish game developer CD Projekt Red, the maker of triple-A games like Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher series, has disclosed today a ransomware attack. From a report: In messages posted on its official social media channels, the gaming studio said the attack took place yesterday when a threat actor gained access to the company's corporate network. "Although some devices in our network have been encrypted, our backups remain intact. We have already secured our IT infrastructure and begun restoring the data," the company wrote on Facebook and Twitter. The game maker also published a copy of the attacker's ransom note, in which the hackers claimed they obtained copies of the source code for games like Cyberpunk 2077, Gwent, and The Witcher 3, along with an unreleased version of The Witcher 3 game. But despite the threat of a sensitive leak, the game maker said it wouldn't be paying any ransom demand.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A benign barcode scanner with more than 10 million downloads from Google Play has been caught receiving an upgrade that turned it to the dark side, prompting the search-and-advertising giant to remove it. Barcode Scanner, one of dozens of such apps available in the official Google app repository, began its life as a legitimate offering. Then in late December, researchers with security firm Malwarebytes began receiving messages from customers complaining that ads were opening out of nowhere on their default browser. [Malwarebytes mobile malware researcher Nathan Collier] wrote: "No, in the case of Barcode Scanner, malicious code had been added that was not in previous versions of the app. Furthermore, the added code used heavy obfuscation to avoid detection. To verify this is from the same app developer, we confirmed it had been signed by the same digital certificate as previous clean versions. Because of its malign intent, we jumped past our original detection category of Adware straight to Trojan, with the detection of Android/Trojan.HiddenAds.AdQR." Google removed the app after Collier privately notified the company. So far, however, Google has yet to use its Google Play Protect tool to remove the app from devices that had it installed. That means users will have to remove the app themselves.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Researchers at the University of Maryland have turned ordinary sheets of wood into transparent material that is nearly as clear as glass, but stronger and with better insulating properties. It could become an energy efficient building material in the future. CBC.ca reports: Wood is made of two basic ingredients: cellulose, which are tiny fibres, and lignin, which bonds those fibres together to give it strength. Tear a paper towel in half and look closely along the edge. You will see the little cellulose fibres sticking up. Lignin is a glue-like material that bonds the fibres together, a little like the plastic resin in fibreglass or carbon fibre. The lignin also contains molecules called chromophores, which give the wood its brown colour and prevent light from passing through. Early attempts to make transparent wood involved removing the lignin, but this involved hazardous chemicals, high temperatures and a lot of time, making the product expensive and somewhat brittle. The new technique is so cheap and easy it could literally be done in a backyard. Starting with planks of wood a metre long and one millimetre thick, the scientists simply brushed on a solution of hydrogen peroxide using an ordinary paint brush. When left in the sun, or under a UV lamp for an hour or so, the peroxide bleached out the brown chromophores but left the lignin intact, so the wood turned white. Next, they infused the wood with a tough transparent epoxy designed for marine use, which filled in the spaces and pores in the wood and then hardened. This made the white wood transparent. You can see a similar effect by taking that same piece of paper towel, dip half of it in water and place it on a patterned surface. The white paper towel will become translucent with light passing through the water and cellulose fibres without being scattered by refraction. The epoxy in the wood does an even better job, allowing 90 per cent of visible light to pass through. The result is a long piece of what looks like glass, with the strength and flexibility of wood. The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robinhood was sued Monday for wrongful death by the family of Alex Kearns, a 20-year-old customer who took his life last summer after believing he had racked up big losses on the millennial-favored stock trading app. CNBC reports: "This case centers on Robinhood's aggressive tactics and strategy to lure inexperienced and unsophisticated investors, including Alex, to take big risks with the lure of tantalizing profits," said the complaint filed by his parents Dan and Dorothy Kearns, and his sister Sydney Kearns in a California state court in Santa Clara. The family is based in Naperville, Illinois. Robinhood's "reckless conduct directly and proximately caused the death of one of its victims," the complaint said. The lawsuit is also accusing the brokerage of negligent infliction of emotional distress and unfair business practices. Alex Kearns, a then-sophomore at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, committed suicide in June after thinking he had a negative $730,165 cash balance on Robinhood. The complaint alleges that Kearns misunderstood the Robinhood financial statement and was protecting his family from the financial obligation. The suit says that Kearns made three attempts to contact Robinhood customer service regarding the massive underwater balance. However, his messages were met with automated replies, according to the complaint. In a note to his family that CNBC has seen, Kearns accused Robinhood of allowing him to pile on too much risk. He claimed the puts he bought and the shares sold "should have cancelled out," according to the note. "How was a 20 year old with no income able to get assigned almost a million dollars worth of leverage?" read the note Kearns wrote to his family. "There was no intention to be assigned this much and take this much risk, and I only thought that I was risking the money that I actually owned." A Robinhood spokesperson told CNBC, "We were devastated by Alex Kearns' death. Since June, we've made improvements to our options offering."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Biden administration has abandoned a Trump-era lawsuit that sought to block California's net neutrality law. In a court filing today, the US Department of Justice said it "hereby gives notice of its voluntary dismissal of this case." Shortly after, the court announced that the case is "dismissed in its entirety" and "all pending motions in this action are denied as moot." The case began when Trump's DOJ sued California in September 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of California, trying to block a state net neutrality law similar to the US net neutrality law repealed by the Ajit Pai-led FCC. Though Pai's FCC lost an attempt to impose a blanket, nationwide preemption of any state net neutrality law, the US government's lawsuit against the California law was moving forward in the final months of the Trump administration. The Biden DOJ's voluntary dismissal of the case puts an end to that. "I am pleased that the Department of Justice has withdrawn this lawsuit," FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "When the FCC, over my objection, rolled back its net neutrality policies, states like California sought to fill the void with their own laws. By taking this step, Washington is listening to the American people, who overwhelmingly support an open Internet, and is charting a course to once again make net neutrality the law of the land." The report notes that California still has to defend its net neutrality rules against a separate lawsuit filed by the major broadband-industry lobby groups. "The industry groups representing all the biggest ISPs and many smaller ones filed an amended complaint against California in August 2020, claiming the net neutrality law is 'unconstitutional state regulation,'" reports Ars.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A German research organization has developed a magnesium-based "Powerpaste" with an energy density ten times more than current battery technology. Hackaday reports: We've been promised hydrogen-powered engines for some time now. One downside though is the need for hydrogen vehicles to have heavy high-pressure tanks. While a 700 bar tank and the accompanying fuel cell is acceptable for a city bus or a truck, it becomes problematic with smaller vehicles, especially ones such as scooters or even full-sized motorcycles. The Fraunhofer Institute wants to run smaller vehicles on magnesium hydride in a paste form that they call POWERPASTE. The idea is that the paste effectively stores hydrogen at normal temperature and pressure. At 250C, the paste decomposes and releases its hydrogen. While your motorcycle may seem hot when parked in the sun, it isn't getting quite to 250C. Interestingly, the paste only provides half the available hydrogen. The rest is from water added start a reaction to release the hydrogen. Fraunhofer claims the energy density available is greater than that of a 700 bar tank in a conventional hydrogen system and ten times more than current battery technology. One thing that's attractive is that the paste is easy to store and pump. A gas station, for example, could invest $20-30,000 and dispense the paste from a metal drum to meet low demand and then scale up as needed. A hydrogen pumping setup starts at about $1.2 million. Fraunhofer is building a pilot production plant that will produce about four tons of the material a year.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

PCWorld reviews Intel's recently-released benchmarks claiming Apple's M1 isn't faster than their 11th gen Core i7-1185G7 processor, among other things. Here are the claims Intel makes (visit the article to read PCWorld's "take" on each claim): MacBook M1 is slower than Core i7: Intel says in the WebXPRT 3 test, using the same version of Chrome for both the Core i7 system as well as the Arm-native MacBook, Intel takes the lead. The Intel chip was largely ahead in WebXPRT 3, and the x86 chip was nearly three times faster in finishing the photo enhancement test. Intel doesn't just use WebXPRT 3, though. It also shows the Core i7 pummeling the M1 in a PowerPoint-to-PDF export, and in multiple Excel macros by a factor of 2.3x. And yes, Intel used the Arm-native versions of Office for its tests. Core i7 Crushes M1 in AI: For content creation tasks, Intel showed the Core i7 to be about 1.12x faster than the M1 in performing a 4K AVC-to-HEVC/H.265 file conversion. In this benchmark, they had the MacBook using the M1-native version of Handbrake. But the real destruction happens once you get to Topaz Lab's Gigapixel AI and Denoise AI, with the Intel Core chip crushing the M1 in AI-based noise removal and enlargement. Or maybe "crushing" is too nice a term, as it's more like the Core i7 outpaces the M1 by so much, the M1 wishes it had never been designed. M1 doesn't support all the features: Intel also gives itself the lead in Adobe Premiere Pro, using the beta M1 native version in Auto Reframe, exporting to H.264 and H.265. They're decent wins, but come on, the code is still in beta for the Mac. That said, Intel points out that important features like Content Aware Fill are outright disabled on the beta version, and that's a concern. If the native version of Photoshop comes out, and there are critical features missing from it, that's a huge problem for Apple (and Adobe). You can't be faster if you can't run it: For gaming, we see a bit of a back and forth between the Apple M1 and Core i7 in games that actually work on the MacBook. Intel doesn't let it end there, though, and decides to embarrass Apple further by showing the numerous games where the MacBook scores a 0 because game support just doesn't exist. Intel points out that "countless more" games "don't run on the M1," and then for good measure, it rushes Apple's bench with a list 10 more games you can't play on the M1 MacBook: Overwatch, Crysis Remastered, Halo MCC, Red Dead Redemption 2, PUBG, Monster, Hunter World, Doom Eternal, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, Apex Legends, and Rainbow Six Siege. MacBook wouldn't win Evo certification: You know that fancy Intel Evo program that tries to improve laptop performance in key areas that annoy consumers? Well, Intel pretty much says that if Apple submitted the M1 MacBook to the same program that Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Acer and others go through, it would be rejected. The reason? Intel says the M1 MacBook is too slow in doing things that anger consumers, such as "switch to Calendar" in Outlook, "start video conference Zoom" and "select picture menu" in PowerPoint. Great battery life?: Perhaps the most shocking claim Intel showed deals with battery life. While performance tests can be cherry picked by those looking to prove an outcome, battery life usually can't be disputed. Apple's official claim gives the M1 MacBook up to 18 hours of battery life using Apple TV app to watch a 1080p video with the brightness set to "8 clicks from the bottom." Apple also claims up to 15 hours browsing 25 "popular" websites with the same "8 clicks" criteria. When Intel pitted a MacBook Air M1 against an Acer Swift 5 with a Core i7-1165G7, however, it found both basically dead even. The MacBook Air came in at 10 hours and 12 minutes, and the Acer Swift 5 lasted 10 hours and 6 minutes. The difference? Intel said it used Safari to watch a Netflix stream with tabs open with the screen set to a relatively bright 250 nits. On the Acer, Safari was subbed out for Chrome, but the brightness and Netflix remained the same. Intel did add that Apple's "8 clicks up" is about 125 nits of brightness on the MacBook Air which is pretty dim. All kinds of things just don't work on the M1: Intel didn't just get into the performance of the M1. It also said it found the MacBook Pro had serious shortcomings, such as an inability to use more than one display with a Thunderbolt dock. And while the PC can use gaming headsets, eGPUs, a third-party finger print reader, Wacom Drawing tablet and Xbox Controller, Intel said it found the MacBook Pro simply doesn't work with eGPUs, and had multiple issues with other devices. That's just hardware incompatibility. Intel's rap battle with Apple also highlights issues with plug-ins for Ableton, Bitwig Studio, Avid Pro Tools, FL Studio, Motu and many others.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM and Palantir have announced a partnership to merge hybrid cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), data processing, and operational technology in a new enterprise offering. ZDNet reports: On Monday, the companies said the new solution, Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data, will "simplify how businesses build and deploy AI-infused applications with IBM Watson and help users access, analyze, and take action on the vast amounts of data that is scattered across hybrid cloud environments without the need for deep technical skills." Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data brings together Palantir Foundry, a data integration and analysis platform, and IBM Cloud Pak for Data services, including IBM Watson. The new enterprise product has been built to reduce data silos and cut out the technical expertise generally required to make use of AI analysis. According to IBM, the offering will be a "no/low-code" platform for deploying AI applications able to process data effectively and quickly, "extend[ing] existing enterprise systems and accelerate their digital transformation." As part of the partnership, Palantir is adopting Red Hat OpenShift for improved technological compatibility in hybrid cloud environments. Palantir for IBM Cloud Pak for Data is expected to be generally availabile in March 2021.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: MIT's CSAIL department this week showcased "LaserFactory," a new project that attempts to develop robotics, drones and other machines than can be fabricated as part of a "one-stop shop." The system is comprised of a software kit and hardware platform designed to create structures and assemble circuitry and sensors for the machine. A more fully realized version of the project will be showcased at an event in May, but the team is pulling back the curtain a bit to show what the concept looks like in practice. Here's a breakdown from CSAIL's page: "Let's say a user has aspirations to create their own drone. They'd first design their device by placing components on it from a parts library, and then draw on circuit traces, which are the copper or aluminum lines on a printed circuit board that allow electricity to flow between electronic components. They'd then finalize the drone's geometry in the 2D editor. In this case, they'd use propellers and batteries on the canvas, wire them up to make electrical connections, and draw the perimeter to define the quadcopter's shape." For more information, CSAIL has released an accompanying video showing the machine in action. A technical paper is available here.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Newly Google-owned Fitbit has introduced blood sugar tracking to its mobile app, helping you manage diabetes or any other health issue related to your glucose levels. Android Authority reports: The feature isn't available from Fitbit's current wearables, unfortunately. You'll have to either import or manually log blood sugar data in the Fitbit app yourself. When you do, though, you can set custom target ranges and check trends both throughout the day and over the long run. You can see if a change in diet is having an effect, for instance. Standard blood sugar tracking is free, although Fitbit Premium subscribers will "gradually" get the option to track levels over 30-day periods, with correlations and trends. Members will also get to share their levels through Health Coaching and the Wellness Report.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter Pibroch(CiH) writes: Andrew Spinks, the creator of Terraria and lead developer for Re-Logic, has been trying to find out why his Google account (which encompasses YouTube, Gmail, and many other important services) was suddenly banned and locked with no warning. According to Ars Technica: "Spinks says his entire Google account has been down for three weeks now, and Google has 'done nothing but given me the runaround.' You can view the quality of Google's support on Twitter for yourself. After the tweet from the official Terrarria account, YouTube support declined Re-logic's request to try to solve the problem privately, choosing instead to publicly offer irrelevant suggestions to the game developer with over 30 million customers. First, YouTube asked if Re-Logic could access its banned email account, which the developer already explained was banned. Then, YouTube suggested trying Google's account recovery system, which is only for users who have forgotten their Google password. Finally, YouTube shared instructions for how to recover a voluntarily deleted Google account, which is in no way relevant to an account ban." Spinks has moved to cancel the release of the popular game Terraria on Google's Stadia game streaming platform.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from WTSP: hacker gained access to Oldsmar's water treatment plant, bumping the sodium hydroxide in the water to a "dangerous" level, according to Pinellas County's sheriff. In a press conference Monday, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said his deputies, along with the FBI and U.S. Secret Service, are investigating the breach as it is unclear if it came from within the U.S. or from a foreign actor. The incident first occurred on Feb. 5 at the city's water treatment plant when, around 8 a.m., an operator noticed someone had remotely entered the computer system that he was monitoring. It's a system responsible for controlling the chemicals and other operations of the water treatment plant, Gualtieri said. And this time, Gualtieri says, the hacker did more than just remote in. According to the sheriff, the hacker spent up to five minutes in the system and adjusted the amount of sodium hydroxide in the water from 100 parts per million to 11,100. "This is obviously a significant and potentially dangerous increase. Sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, is the main ingredient in liquid drain cleaners," Gualtieri added. The operator immediately reduced the levels back to the appropriate amount and "at no time was there a significant adverse effect on the water being treated." Even if the operator did not notice the intrusion, the sheriff, Oldsmar Mayor Eric Seidel and City Manager Al Braithwaite all noted several fail-safes and alarm systems are in place to flag issues of this kind. Gualtieri reinforced that at no time was the public in danger.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Rust -- the programming language, not the survival game -- now has a new home: the Rust Foundation. From a report: AWS, Huawei, Google, Microsoft and Mozilla banded together to launch this new foundation today and put a two-year commitment to a million-dollar budget behind it. This budget will allow the project to "develop services, programs, and events that will support the Rust project maintainers in building the best possible Rust." Rust started as a side project inside of Mozilla to develop an alternative to C/C++. Designed by Mozilla Research's Graydon Hore, with contributions from the likes of JavaScript creator Brendan Eich, Rust became the core language for some of the fundamental features of the Firefox browser and its Gecko engine, as well as Mozilla's Servo engine. Today, Rust is the most-loved language among developers. But with Mozilla's layoffs in recent months, many on the Rust team lost jobs and the future of the language became unclear without a main sponsor, though the project itself has thousands of contributors and a lot of corporate users, so the language itself wasn't going anywhere.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Europe's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, has warned Apple to give equal treatment to all apps on its platform amid the iPhone maker's privacy changes that have drawn charges of anti-competitive practices from rival Facebook. From a report: Apple will in the spring ask iPhone users for consent to track their data for personalized ads in what it says is a move to protect users' privacy but which will limit apps' ability to gather data from people's phones that can be used for targeted advertising. Facebook has been among the most vocal of the critics which stand to lose a substantial part of their revenue from Apple's move. Facebook in a December blog post called it anti-competitive behaviour, saying that Apple's own personalized ad platform would be exempt from the new requirement giving users a choice of whether to opt in to tracking by third parties. Vestager said while the issue is privacy-related, it can morph into an antitrust issue if Apple tilts the level playing field. "It can be competition if it is shown that Apple is not treating its own apps in the same way," she told Reuters in an interview on Monday.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Over the past several weeks, developer Kosta Eleftheriou has been highlighting many apparent scam applications on the App Store. The formula for each scam application is virtually identical, and it centers on fake reviews and ratings paired with a deceptive weekly subscription. From a report: Eleftheriou is the developer behind FlickType, a popular Apple Watch keyboard application that brings gesture typing to the wearable device. He was also one of the creators of the Flesky keyboard app, acquired by Pinterest, and Blind Type, acquired by Google. The thread began two weeks ago, when Eleftheriou began highlighting applications that were essentially non-functional ripoffs of FlickType. One of the most blatant ones was KeyWatch: "Just a few months ago, I was way ahead of my competition. By the time they figured out just how hard autocorrect algorithms were, I was already rolling out the swipe version of my keyboard, quickly approaching iPhone typing speeds. So how did they beat me? First, they made an app that appeared to fulfill the promise of a watch keyboard -- but was practically unusable. Then, they started heavily advertising on FB & Instagram, using my own promo video, of my own app, with my actual name on it." When users downloaded the app, the first screen was a blank interface with an "Unlock now" button. Tap the "Unlock now" button, and you'd be prompted with Apple's buy screen to confirm an $8/week subscription for an app that was nonfunctional.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract Covid-19 than to receive the vaccinations. From a report: The social network has increasingly changed its content policies over the past year as the coronavirus has surged. In October, the social network prohibited people and companies from purchasing advertising that included false or misleading information about vaccines. In December, Facebook said it would remove posts with claims that had been debunked by the World Health Organization or government agencies. Monday's move goes further by targeting unpaid posts to the site and particularly Facebook pages and groups. Instead of targeting only misinformation around Covid vaccines, the update encompasses false claims around all vaccines. Facebook said it consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to determine a list of false or misleading claims around Covid and vaccines in general. In the past, Facebook had said it would only "downrank," or push lower down in people's News Feeds, misleading or false claims about vaccines, making it more difficult to find such groups or posts. Now posts, pages and groups containing such falsehoods will be removed from the platform entirely. "Building trust and confidence in these vaccines is critical, so we're launching the largest worldwide campaign to help public health organizations share accurate information about Covid-19 vaccines and encourage people to get vaccinated as vaccines become available to them," Kang-Xing Jin, head of health at Facebook, said in a company blog post.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A company says it has listed the first 3D printed house in the United States for sale," reports CNN."This is the future, there is no doubt about it," says Kirk Andersen, the director of operations at SQ4D Inc. SQ4D uses automated building methods, or 3D printing, to build structures and homes... The company can set up its Autonomous Robotic Construction System at a build site in six to eight hours. It then lays concrete layer by layer, creating footing, the foundation of a house and the interior and exterior walls of the structure... "The cost of construction is 50% cheaper than the cost of comparable newly-constructed homes in Riverhead, New York, and 10 times faster," said Stephen King, the Zillow Premier agent who has the 3D house listing... "I want people to not be afraid of automation...it is just a different tool and different method. But it's still the same product; we are still building a house at the end of the day," says Kirk Andersen, the director of operations at SQ4D... "We can make things more affordable and safer. We can use the technology to tackle homelessness, and aid in disaster relief in an eco-friendly way," Andersen said.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants commuting to work replaced with VR/AR telecommuting. Zuckerberg made the suggestion on a talkshow on Clubhouse, reports The International Business Times:"One of the things that [VR] will unlock is the ability to live anywhere you want and be present in another place and really feel like you are there," the Facebook CEO said."It is going to unlock a lot of economic opportunity because people will be able to live where they want and increasingly work where they want and kind of teleport into place. I am also pretty optimistic about the impact on climate, in reducing the amount of commuting that people have to do. I think the advance in electric cars in reducing emissions is great and exciting, but I tell my team that it is easier to move bits of atoms around so we should be teleporting, not driving...." Zuckerberg suggested a combination of both VR and AR technologies to achieve the dream of teleportation... Zuckerberg said the progress is steady at his labs on foundational technologies that will revolutionize the future of travel with the help of both VR and AR. "There is getting all the graphics and visual systems to really feel like you are immersed in the space. There's a long path of technology that needs to get done to kind of get that to be as realistic as you would want on VR," he said. Business Insider notes the three-week-old talkshow — the same one visited by Elon Musk — is hosted by a Facebook employee and her VC husband, and is "focused on optimism... Guests on the show talk about future innovations without skepticism... Unlike traditional interviewers, Krishnan and Ramamurthy, as well as their guests, do not appear to push back against the ideas discussed, instead letting them flow freely." CNET notes the appearance drew a skeptical response on Twitter from Ellen Pao, former CEO of social media company Reddit. "FB execs going on Clubhouse shows CH is all about tight control over messaging and avoiding hard questions and accountability." Zuckerberg summarized his position with seven words. "We should be teleporting, not transporting, ourselves."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It's been estimated that there are 24 million developers in the world. 14 million of them now use Microsoft's Visual Studio Code (VS Code) as their IDE, reports ZDNet, with five million new users arriving in 2020. Julia Liuson, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer division, tells them why:"The strategy for VS Code is really to support our any, any, any strategy. You can be a developer working with any programming language, working on any operating system and develop any kind of software." VS Code runs on macOS, Windows 10, and multiple distributions of Linux, it supports Arm64 on Linux, and runs on Raspberry Pi and Chromebooks. It's also available in preview form Part of VS Code's popularity is the breadth of language extensions for C++, C#, Python and various Python libraries for data scientists, Java, and JavaScript/Typescript... "We have almost two million Python developers using VS Code and well over a million C++ developers using VS Code," said Liuson. "And even our Java usage is approaching one million...." Liuson also talked about Microsoft's inner source approach to software development. The company doubled down on inner source in 2019, and recently highlighted its inner-source approach as a factor that mitigated the threat of the SolarWinds hackers accessing its source code. Microsoft didn't make up the term inner source and the approach means taking open-source development practices and applying them inside a single organization. GitHub and GitHub's Enterprise Server fits snuggly with this approach to help organizations collaborate but do so in private. "Inner source means if you have private IP, but you're inviting other teams within the company to collaborate with you. That's the fundamental difference between open source and inner source. Today, it's very common in large enterprise..."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

31.9 million Americans have already received one or both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine — including more than 9.3 million people who have been fully vaccinated. And now USA Today reports:Pfizer expects to nearly cut in half the amount of time it takes to produce a batch of COVID-19 vaccine from 110 days to an average of 60 as it makes the process more efficient and production is built out, the company told USA TODAY. As the nation revs up its vaccination programs, the increase could help relieve bottlenecks caused by vaccine shortages. "We call this 'Project Light Speed,' and it's called that for a reason," said Chaz Calitri, Pfizer's vice president for operations for sterile injectables, who runs the company's plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan. "Just in the last month we've doubled output." The increased speed and capacity is not unexpected, said Robert Van Exan, president of Immunization Policy and Knowledge Translation, a vaccine production consulting firm. "Nobody's ever produced mRNA vaccines at this scale, so you can bet your bottom dollar the manufacturers are learning as they go. I bet you every day they run into some vaccine challenge and every day they solve it, and that goes into their playbook," he said... As soon as vials of vaccine began coming off the production line, engineers started analyzing how production could work faster and better. "We made a lot of really slick enhancements," he said. Production is getting faster. For example, making the DNA that starts the vaccine process first took 16 days; soon it will take nine or 10. Though quality control and testing has accelerated, company officials say FDA regulations and best manufacturing practices are still being met. Along with improving speed, Pfizer also is increasing output by adding manufacturing lines in all three plants. As the vaccine effort continues, more efficiencies are expected. Across America a bout 20.6 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine have already been administered.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday the 71-year-old former lead singer of the band Kiss tweeted "I bought Dogecoin...six figures," to his 922,000 followers, along with other supportive tweets. Saturday rap artist Snoop Dogg tweeted an image of "Snoop Doge" to his 19.2 million followers. Later Elon Musk tweeted a picture from the Lion King with Musk's head appearing on a monkey holding up a monkey with Gene Simmons' head, holding up a monkey with Snoop Dogg's head, holding up a Shiba Inu dog (symbolizing Dogecoin). The text of the tweet to his 45.9 million followers: "So... it's finally come to this..." (He also later tweeted "Dogecoin to the Moooonn".) Hours later Bloomberg reported that Dogecoin "rose 46% in the last 24 hours to 7.4 cents as of 1 p.m. in New York on Sunday," citing data from CoinMarketCap. In fact, Dogecoin is now approaching its all-time high, with a market value of $9.5 billion, making it the world's 10th-largest cryptocurrency. ("Bitcoin has also rallied this week, topping a record of $40,000, before paring gains.") Business Insider calls Dogecoin a "meme-based cryptocurrency," noting it's "benefited" from the mania driven by Reddit's WallStreetBets. But they also point its year-to-date returns were about 1,032.91% (according to CoinDesk calculations). "In a world gone mad with a pandemic and social upheaval, cryptocurrencies are having a moment," writes the Chicago Tribune:[Dogecoin] bubbled along for years at well under a penny, but in 2018 leapt to a high of nearly 2 cents as part of a larger cryptocurrency bubble. It didn't last — within a day it was worth less than 1 cent again — but that set a pattern in which everyone from TikTokkers to Musk could make the price jump with some online attention, all the while egged on by investors cheering, "To the moon!" Still, it took the recent stock run-up to catapult the currency to an unprecedented pinnacle, as commenters begged each other not to sell to keep the price high... Ja'Mal Green, a Black Lives Matter activist and former Chicago mayoral candidate who said he has "many thousands" of Dogecoins, sees the currency as a way for people without much money or financial expertise to get in the game with hedge funds and billionaires. "I like how these groups are coming together to really talk about what it means to play in cryptocurrency or stocks, to play in the market," he said. "It's great to see the bottom 99% come together to figure out how they can achieve wealth together and bridge that economic gap a bit." But Eric Budish, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business who studies cryptocurrencies, warned they are particularly vulnerable to bubbles because they are not tied to economic fundamentals in the way a stock price (ideally) reflects a company's earnings. As long as everyone holds, he said, the price will indeed go up. The problem is you can never be sure you've picked the right time to cash out. "When people try to sell, the price will come down," he said. "That means everybody wants to sell first. Nobody wants to be the last guy selling, and that's sort of the essence of a pump and dump...." Nelson Morales, a Beach Park, Illinois, data center engineer who runs a Facebook group called Cryptocurrency of Greater Chicago, has his doubts about the currency. He worries about inexperienced investors getting drawn into a "dangerous, roulette-style pump" that could end with a disastrous crash. Still, that hasn't stopped him from putting $50 of his own into Dogecoin. "I just want to have a canary in the tunnel," he said. "The canary's still alive. I'm impressed."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Four environmental groups are crying victory after France was found guilty of failing to meet climate change goals it committed to in a historic accord signed in and named after its own capital city," reports CBS News:The Administrative Tribunal in Paris ruled Wednesday that France had fallen short of its promise to reduce greenhouse gases under commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and was "responsible for ecological damage." While the court declared the government guilty of inaction, it rejected a claim for damages by the four NGOs that brought the suit, ordering the government to pay just one symbolic euro to them instead. The tribunal also said it would decide within two months whether to recommend any measures for the government to resolve its failure to meet its own commitments... Former Green Party leader and cabinet minister Cécile Duflot, who's now the head of Oxfam France, one of the four NGOs that dragged the government into court, called this week's largely symbolic ruling, "a historic victory for climate justice." Oxfam France was joined by Greenpeace France and two French environmental groups in bringing the case against the government. Two years ago, they organized a petition to denounce what they called "climate inaction" by the French state. In just a month they garnered two million signatures, and in March 2019 they filed the lawsuit, alleging failure to act. In signing the Paris climate accord in December 2015, France committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% compared to 1990 levels by 2030, and to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Last year, France decided to defer that commitment.... The French government issued a statement saying it had "taken note of" the court's decision, acknowledging that initial objectives had not been achieved and promising that a new bill to address the climate would be debated in parliament next month. That legislation, the government said, would constitute "a new and decisive step in accelerating France's ecological transition."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A Swiss technology company says it has made a breakthrough by using quantum computers to uncover vulnerabilities in commonly used encryption," reports Bloomberg:Terra Quantum AG said its discovery "upends the current understanding of what constitutes unbreakable" encryption... Terra Quantum AG has a team of about 80 quantum physicists, cryptographers and mathematicians, who are based in Switzerland, Russia, Finland and the U.S. "What currently is viewed as being post-quantum secure is not post-quantum secure," said Markus Pflitsch, chief executive officer and founder of Terra Quantum, in an interview. "We can show and have proven that it isn't secure and is hackable..." The company said that its research found vulnerabilities that affect symmetric encryption ciphers, including the Advanced Encryption Standard, or AES, which is widely used to secure data transmitted over the internet and to encrypt files. Using a method known as quantum annealing, the company said its research found that even the strongest versions of AES encryption may be decipherable by quantum computers that could be available in a few years from now. Vinokur said in an interview that Terra Quantum's team made the discovery after figuring out how to invert what's called a "hash function," a mathematical algorithm that converts a message or portion of data into a numerical value. The research will show that "what was once believed unbreakable doesn't exist anymore," Vinokur said, adding that the finding "means a thousand other ways can be found soon." The company, which is backed by the Zurich-based venture capital firm Lakestar LP, has developed a new encryption protocol that it says can't be broken by quantum computers. Vinokur said the new protocol utilizes a method known as quantum key distribution. Terra Quantum is currently pursuing a patent for the new protocol. But the company will make it available for free, according to Pflitsch. "We will open up access to our protocol to make sure we have a safe and secure environment," said Pflitsch. "We feel obliged to share it with the world and the quantum community."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"The U.S. app Clubhouse erupted among Chinese social-media users over the weekend," reports Bloomberg, "with thousands joining discussions on contentious subjects...undisturbed by Beijing's censors."On the invite-only, audio-based social app where users host informal conversations, Chinese-speaking communities from around the world gathered to discuss China-Taiwan relations and the prospects of unification, and to share their knowledge and experience of Beijing's crackdown on Muslim Uighurs in the far west region of Xinjiang. Open discussion of such topics is off limits in China, where heavy government censorship is the norm... On Friday night, a room attracted more than 4,000 people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to share their stories and views on a range of topics including uniting the two sides. In another room on Saturday, several members of the Uighur ethnic community now living overseas shared their experience of events in Xinjiang, where China has rolled out a widely criticized re-education program that saw an estimated 1 million people or more put into camps... "Thanks to Clubhouse I have the freedom and the audience to express my opinion," a Finland-based doctor and activist who goes by Halmurat Harri Uyghur told Bloomberg News. Bloomberg spoke to Michael Norris, a research/strategy manager at a Shanghai-based consultancy, who said most Chinese Clubhouse users he'd spoken to are part of the tech/investment/marketing world. "Those who do engage in political discussion on Clubhouse take on a degree of personal risk," he said. "While most are aware Clubhouse records real names, phone numbers and voice, they are broadly unaware about recent cases in China involving interrogation and jail for errant posts on Twitter."Since Clubhouse so far is only accessible on Apple Inc.'s iPhone and users must have a non-Chinese Apple account, the app has only gained traction among a small cohort of educated citizens, according to Fang Kecheng, a communications professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "I don't think it can really reach the general public in China," he said. "If so, it will surely get blocked." Reuters highlights the significance of the event:"I don't know how long this environment can last", said one user in a popular Weibo post that was liked over 65,000 times. "But I will definitely remember this moment in Internet history."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long ago there were plans for a remastered Xbox 360 version of the Nintendo 64 game "Goldeneye 007" — but they never materialized, and that game became a lost legend. But then Monday Ars Technica interviewed longtime Spanish game streamer Graslu00, who had somehow uploaded a two-hour video demo-ing the lost game.The files came with a peculiar note: "Never say never, release coming soon, James." Days later Engadget reported:This week, a ROM of a canceled 2007 Xbox 360 remaster of the game appeared online, allowing those with a PC to play it using an emulator. According to VGC (via Polygon), the leaked ROM includes the game's entire single-player campaign, as well as its multiplayer component. It also allows players to seamlessly toggle between the remaster's enhanced textures and effects and the original's blocky N64 graphics. So this weekend the BBC tracked down videogame designer David Doak, who'd worked on the original 1997 game, who admitted it was fun finally seeing the remastered game "out in the wild.""It is always heart-warming to see that the original game is still so fondly remembered and has obviously brought joy to so many people over almost 25 years since release. "The current excitement over the leak of this 'naughty remaster' speaks volumes for the impact and enduring legacy of GoldenEye 007." David Doak also appeared as a character called Dr Doak in the original game, but was replaced in the remastered version. Some gamers have already modified the leaked software to put him back in, which he said was "particularly touching." Since 2009 he's been using the Twitter handle @DrDoak. In March he'd tweeted, "Dr Doak works in a chemical weapons facility. He washes his hands regularly and is careful to avoid touching his face. This is good practice. Be like Dr Doak."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A Slashdot reader shared an anonymous tip about "new consumer-grade artificial intelligence employed to restore 85 year-old Popeye cartoons, using only the available digital copies as sources for the remastering." It's eerie to see vintage cartoons like Popeye the Sailor meets Sindbad the Sailor upgraded to high resolution. It's apparently the work of Cartoon Renewal Studios, a group "Dedicated to the loving and careful preservation of classic off-copyright animation" (according to its web site). There's not much information, but Jim Ames of Cartoon Renewal Studios turned up in an online forum promising "we're restoring ALL the classic cartoons to brilliant 1080 HD so they can be enjoyed forever." I've been dreaming of this project for some time... We will be posting THOUSANDS of off-copyright cartoons digitally remastered and upscaled to 1080 HD. We can process about 50 cartoons a month, at this time... Hoping to scale up to 100 cartoons a month processing capability next month. We could finish 1000 cartoons in 2021... stay tuned...Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A pro-China network of fake and impostor accounts found a global audience on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to mock the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic," reports the Associated Press, "as well as the deadly riot in Washington that left five dead, new research published Thursday found." Slashdot reader schwit1 shared their report:Messages posted by the network, which also praised China, reached the social media feeds of government officials, including some in China and Venezuela who retweeted posts from the fake accounts to millions of their followers. The international reach marked new territory for a pro-China social media network that has been operating for years, said Ben Nimmo, head of investigations for Graphika, the social media analysis firm that monitored the activity. "For the very first time, it started to get a little bit of audience interaction," Nimmo said... The posts appear to target social media users outside of the United States, gaining traction in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Venezuela — places where Chinese and U.S. diplomatic or financial interests have increasingly come into conflict. "The overall message is: America is doing very badly. China is doing very well," Nimmo said. "Who do you want to be like?" The network used photos of Chinese celebrities on the accounts and, in one case, hijacked the verified Twitter account of a Latin American soap opera show to post messages, according to Graphika's report... "There's this cherry-picking of narratives and events that make the U.S. look really bad," Nimmo said. Last month, YouTube announced that it had removed more than 3,000 YouTube channels in December that were identified as part of Graphika's investigation into influence campaigns linked to China. Other Facebook and Twitter accounts identified in Graphika's report were also removed.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Cornell Alliance for Science seeks to build "a significant international alliance of partners" to "correct misinformation and counter conspiracy theories" slowing progress on climate change, synthetic biology, agricultural innovations, and other issues. This week Slashdot reader wooloohoo shared their report from Slyvia Tetteh, who works with Ghana's chamber of Agribusiness and serves as an intermediary to farmers:The advent of climate change, coupled with new plant pests and diseases, has worsened the plight of Ghanaian farmers, relegating them to remain in poverty as their crop yields and incomes plunge. Modern, climate-smart agricultural technologies, such as genetically modified crops (GMOs), can help combat these threats. However, scare-mongering and misinformation, which Ghanaians term "scarecrow," make farmers perceive such technology as white man's witchcraft. Since they see it unnatural, they are stuck with crude, unproductive farming methods — the "hoe." The adoption of GM insect-resistant cowpea and nitrogen use-efficient rice could help farmers in Ghana to improve their yields, their incomes and their lives. These crops have been vetted and recommended by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research of Ghana. But regulatory delays that prevent farmers from accessing these improved seeds, and lingering fears about technology, may erode these benefits in both Ghana and Africa at large... Achieving a hunger-free continent involves lots of education about available technology, training and efforts to change societal beliefs and mindsets regarding GM crops. There is still a lot of work to be done, and everyone's help is needed if Ghana and the rest of the continent are to embrace these breakthrough discoveries and contribute to making Africa the food basket of the world.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"Catching the coronavirus from surfaces is rare. The World Health Organization and national public-health agencies need to clarify their advice," urges an editorial in Nature (shared by long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo):A year into the pandemic, the evidence is now clear. The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is transmitted predominantly through the air — by people talking and breathing out large droplets and small particles called aerosols. Catching the virus from surfaces — although plausible — seems to be rare. Despite this, some public-health agencies still emphasize that surfaces pose a threat and should be disinfected frequently. The result is a confusing public message when clear guidance is needed on how to prioritize efforts to prevent the virus spreading... People and organizations continue to prioritize costly disinfection efforts, when they could be putting more resources into emphasizing the importance of masks, and investigating measures to improve ventilation. The latter will be more complex but could make more of a difference. Now that it is agreed that the virus transmits through the air, in both large and small droplets, efforts to prevent spread should focus on improving ventilation or installing rigorously tested air purifiers. People must also be reminded to wear masks and maintain a safe distance. At the same time, agencies such as the WHO and the CDC need to update their guidance on the basis of current knowledge. Research on the virus and on COVID-19 moves quickly, so public-health agencies have a responsibility to present clear, up-to-date information that provides what people need to keep themselves and others safe.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Robert J. Shapiro advised senior members of the Obama administration on economic policy, and served as an Under Secretary of Commerce under Bill Clinton. Now a senior fellow at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, he's suspicious of the surge in GameStop's stock price:Allegedly, this is the tale of scrappy, small online day traders buying shares of a beleaguered company to thwart a hedge fund scheme to take it down... Yet, certain facts are publicly available, including GameStop's daily trading volume, its daily prices, the number of short sales of its stock, and how many shares are held by big institutional players. Those facts suggest that the Reddit online traders have been on the sidelines of a trading war among a handful of big institutional investors. The SEC should subpoena the records because the hard data also suggest that some big players may be using trading strategies used in the past to manipulate stock prices... Unless most of the Reddit bunch have assets in the top one-tenth of one percent of Americans, they were mere bystanders to last week's trading of 682 million shares at an average price of $218.20 — purchases totaling nearly $150 billion in a wildly volatile market. Only institutional investors have such resources to trade stocks, not self-styled populists with Robinhood on their iPhones. Since most big players are regulated public corporations with fiduciary responsibilities to avoid the enormous risks involved in this high-stakes game of chicken, the GameStop players almost certainly are all lightly regulated hedge funds. The trading volume and price gyrations also suggest that those hedge funds may be manipulating the market... [S]ome 20 million or more of the GameStop shorts were never borrowed and never delivered to their buyers. They were what the SEC calls "naked shorts." The SEC has banned naked shorting as abusive market manipulation because large-scale naked shorting artificially drives down a stock's price. Given the volume of short sales and overall trading in GameStop, large-scale naked short-selling was clearly involved when GameStop's share price fell $153 last Wednesday (from $347 to $194) and again this Monday when the price plummeted from $325 to $225... The data also suggest a bigger story of possible manipulation involving the huge increases in GameStop's share price. The wild swings in those share prices reflect hundreds of millions of shares being traded each day, mostly in big blocks and presumably from one hedge fund to another. When the price rose, one fund got out and took huge profits while another bought in, expecting the price to rise further, and yet another sold short, expecting the price to fall... In effect, hedge funds may have manipulated GameStop in opposite directions, wringing out profits daily or even two or three times a day. If this is correct, the GameStop saga is not some populist uprising but a rolling version of "pump and dump," a classic form of manipulation and naked shorting.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A new book promises "the untold story of the cyberweapons market — the most secretive, invisible, government-backed market on earth — and a terrifying first look at a new kind of global warfare." Its author — a New York Times cybersecurity reporter — shares the book's story about David Evenden, a former National Security Agency analyst who later worked in Abu Dhabi:He, like two dozen other N.S.A. analysts and contractors, had been lured to the United Arab Emirates by a boutique Beltway contractor with offers to double, even quadruple, their salaries and promises of a tax-free lifestyle in the Gulf's luxury playground. The work would be the same as it had been at the agency, they were told, just on behalf of a close ally. It was all a natural extension of America's War on Terror. Mr. Evenden started tracking terror cells in the Gulf. This was 2014, ISIS had just laid siege to Mosul and Tikrit and Mr. Evenden tracked its members as they switched out burner phones and messaging apps... Soon, though, he was assigned to a new project: proving the Emiratis' neighbor, Qatar, was funding the Muslim Brotherhood. The only way to do that, Mr. Evenden told his bosses, would be to hack Qatar. "Go for it," they told him. No matter that Qatar was also an American ally or that, once inside its networks, his bosses showed no interest in ever getting out. Before long his team at the contractor, CyberPoint, was hacking Emirati enemies, real and perceived, all over the world: Soccer officials at FIFA, the monarchy's Twitter critics, and especially Qatari royals. They wanted to know where they were flying, who they were meeting, what they were saying. This too was part of the mission, Mr. Evenden was told; it had all been cleared up high. In the War on Terror and the cyber arms market, you could rationalize just about anything. All the rationalizations were stripped away the day emails from the first lady of the United States popped up on his screen. In late 2015, Michelle Obama's team was putting the finishing touches on a trip to the Middle East. Qatar's Sheikha Moza bint Nasser had invited Mrs. Obama to speak... And every last email between the first lady, her royal highness, and their staff — every personal reflection, reservation, itinerary change and security detail — was beaming back to former N.S.A. analysts' computers in Abu Dhabi. "That was the moment I said, 'We shouldn't be doing this,' he told me. "We should not be targeting these people." Mr. Evenden and his family were soon on a flight home. He and the few colleagues who joined him tipped off the F.B.I. (The agency does not comment on investigations, but interviews suggest its review of CyberPoint is ongoing.) To pre-empt any fallout, some employees came clean to Reuters. The hack of Sheika Moza's emails with Mrs. Obama has never been reported. It wasn't long after Mr. Evenden settled back in the states that he started fielding calls and LinkedIn messages from his old buddies at the N.S.A., still in the service, who had gotten a "really cool job offer" from Abu Dhabi and wanted his advice. By 2020, the calls had become a drumbeat. "Don't go," he pleaded. "This is not the work you think you will be doing." You might think you're a patriot now, he wanted to warn them, but one day soon you too could wake up and find you're just another mercenary in a cyber arms race gone horribly wrong... The author criticizes America's security establishment. "When we discovered openings in the systems that govern the digital universe, we didn't automatically turn them over to manufacturers for patching. We kept them vulnerable in the event the F.B.I. needed to access a terrorist's iPhone or Cyber Command had reason to drop a cyberweapon on Iran's grid one day..." But the author also warns that "the potential for a calamitous attack — a deadly explosion at a chemical plant set in motion by vulnerable software, for example — is a distraction from the predicament we are already in. Everything worth taking has already been intercepted: Our personal data, intellectual property, voter rolls, medical records, even our own cyberweaponry..." The book's title? This is How They Tell Me the World Ends.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Long-time Slashdot reader Futurepower(R) shared this investigation from the Washington Post's technology writer:When I spot-checked what a couple dozen apps claim about privacy in the App Store, I found more than a dozen that were either misleading or flat-out inaccurate... Apple's big privacy product is built on a shaky foundation: the honor system. In tiny print on the detail page of each app label, Apple says, "This information has not been verified by Apple." The first time I read that, I did a double take. Apple, which says caring for our privacy is a "core responsibility," surely knows devil-may-care data harvesters can't be counted on to act honorably... About 1 in 3 of the apps I checked that claimed they took no data appeared to be inaccurate... If a journalist and a talented geek could find so many problems just by kicking over a few stones, why isn't Apple? Even after I sent it a list of dubious apps, Apple wouldn't answer my specific questions, including: How many bad apps has it caught? If being inaccurate means you get the boot, why are some of the ones I flagged still available? Putting aside the deception, there's another question: Are Apple's labels even helpful...? Nowhere on any of Apple's privacy labels, in fact, do we learn with whom apps are sharing our data. Imagine if nutrition facts labels left off the whole section about ingredients. Irony alert, there's a tech giant that is more transparent: Facebook. With a setting called "off-Facebook activity" that it launched in 2020, you can actually see all the different apps and websites that are feeding your data to Facebook and ask the social network to stop using the data to target you with ads. Finally, the article notes that apps from some major companies — including Google — "have yet to even post labels."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The more educated people are, the more likely they are to believe claims made by QAnon, according to a tracking poll by polling firm Morning Consult. From Politico: Twenty-seven percent of people with a postgraduate degree responded that QAnon claims are either very accurate or somewhat accurate. That compared to 20% of those with a bachelor's degree and 14% of those with less than a college degree. The numbers were similar in Morning Consult's October poll. But a new survey from the same pollsters also shows fewer Americans believing in QAnon's conspiracy theories. Newsweek writes:While eight percent of Americans still believe the radical conspiracy theory is "very accurate" and a further 10 percent consider its claims "somewhat accurate," this 18 percent figure is a six-point drop from a similar poll in October... Trust in the widely debunked conspiracy listed as a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI is also dropping among Republicans. According to the survey, 24 percent of GOP voters who have heard of QAnon say its claims are at least somewhat accurate — a 14-point drop from October... And 51% of the adults surveyed also believe social media's spread of conspiracy theories is a "major problem."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A New Jersey appeals court has ruled that a man accused of murder is entitled to review proprietary genetic testing software to challenge evidence presented against him," reports The Register. Long-time Slashdot reader couchslug shared their report:The maker of the software, Cybergenetics, has insisted in lower court proceedings that the program's source code is a trade secret. The co-founder of the company, Mark Perlin, is said to have argued against source code analysis by claiming that the program, consisting of 170,000 lines of MATLAB code, is so dense it would take eight and a half years to review at a rate of ten lines an hour. The company offered the defense access under tightly controlled conditions outlined in a non-disclosure agreement, which included accepting a $1m liability fine in the event code details leaked. But the defense team objected to the conditions, which they argued would hinder their evaluation and would deter any expert witness from participating... Those arguing on behalf of the defense cited past problems with other genetic testing software such as STRmix and FST (Forensic Statistical Tool). Defense expert witnesses Mats Heimdahl and Jeanna Matthews, for example, said that STRmix had 13 coding errors that affected 60 criminal cases, errors not revealed until a source code review. They also pointed out, as the appeals court ruling describes, how an FST source code review "uncovered that a 'secret function...was present in the software, tending to overestimate the likelihood of guilt.'" EFF activists have already filed briefs in multiple courts "warning of the danger of secret software being used to convict criminal defendants," reports an EFF blog post. "No one should be imprisoned or executed based on secret evidence that cannot be fairly evaluated for its reliability, and the ruling in this case will help prevent that injustice."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot reader rushtobugment quotes a story from Hot Hardware:One of the software options for running a Raspberry Pi module is Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian), the officially supported Debian-based operating system put out by The Raspberry Pi Foundation. It has been around since 2015 without too much complaint. However, a recent update has some Raspberry Pi OS users up in arms over a key change involving Microsoft. The latest update installs a Microsoft apt respository on all any machine running Raspberry Pi OS, and does it without any admin consent. As discovered by Reddit user fortysix_n_2, the official reason is an endorsement of Microsoft's integrated development environment, Visual Studio Code, which is fine and dandy. However, it's claimed this even gets installed on headless devices that used a light image without a GUI. As a result, every time you do an "apt update" on your Pi device, the OS pings Microsoft. "By having this repo, every time an install of Raspberry Pi OS is updated it will ping a Microsoft server. Microsoft will know you're using Raspberry Pi OS/likely Raspberry Pi owner and your IP address...." fortysix_n_2 explains. Or, as a headline explains on the Windows Central blog, "Microsoft repo silently added to Raspberry Pi OS, folks begin the freak out..." "As one particularly vocal commenter pointed out, modifying the sources.list in Linux without consent just doesn't happen. It also doesn't just apply to new images, it has been built out to be added to existing machines, too." UPDATE: An anonymous Slashdot reader spotted Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton's response to the controversy on Twitter. When asked if the foundation could be more transparent, like publishing a blog post about the repositories to be included, Upton responded: "I can't understand why you think this was a controversial thing to do. We do things of this sort all the time without putting out a blog post about how to opt out."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Friday the U.S. military released 400 other names it considered for Space Force's soliders (before settling on the word "guardians.") Politico writes that the names were "crowdsourced" from the U.S. military's space workforce, and "Troops clearly had fun with their submissions, which included Space Cadet, Spacies, Anti-Gravity Gang, Homo Spaciens and Spacefolk."But the Space Force had more science fiction-inspired names it could have picked. Fleet Officer, Stormtrooper and Trekkies were both among the suggested names... Many in the public still confuse NASA's civil space mission with the Space Force's national security focus, and a name like Ground-Based Astronauts or Apollonauts, harkening back to the space agency's moon landing program, would not help... One suggestion was Skywalker, though members of the Space Force at least in the short-term will be Earth-bound to operate the nation's GPS constellation and provide early missile warning. Though the Space Force's workforce is expected to be highly-skilled in technical fields, its members may not have taken kindly to one suggestion: Geek... Others perhaps took the suggestion process too literally, with one suggestion just saying "nothing because you wouldn't hear it in space anyway." The UPI reminds readers that the U.S. Space Force "is now a full military branch that was allocated $15.4 billion in the 2021 budget and enlisted 16,000 active duty and civilian personnel who were all reassigned from the defunct Air Force Space Command." White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Wednesday that the Biden administration will keep Space Force... "They absolutely have the full support of the Biden administration. And we are not revisiting the decision to establish the Space Force," Psaki said Wednesday at a White House news briefing... Many experts were not surprised that President Joe Biden will keep Space Force as its own branch of the military because it would take an act of Congress to abolish it when it now has bipartisan support as a valuable tool in future military efforts.... The UPI also got this comment from a research associate with the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The name is funny; it sounds like something that Trump just dreamed up," said Young. "But it's been talked about in national security circles for over a decade now. It's something that's just going to be important to have going forward." And a co-director of the Center for Security, Strategy and Technology at the Brookings Institution tells them bluntly that "The Space Force is a serious attempt to deal with a serious problem, and that problem is the deployment of anti-satellite weapons by countries like Russia and China."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AlmaLinux describes itself as "an open-source, community-driven project that intends to fill the gap left by the demise of the CentOS stable release." And now AlmaLinux "has announced their beta release of their CentOS/RHEL 8 fork," writes Slashdot reader juniorkindergarten. AlmaLinux will be getting $1 million a year in development funding from CloudLinux (the company behind CloudLinux OS, a CentOS clone with over 200,000 active server instances). Their CEO stresses that AlmaLinux "is built with CloudLinux expertise but will be owned and governed by the community. We intend to deliver this forever-free Linux distribution this quarter." And they've committed to supporting it through 2029. Their press release touts AlmaLinux as "a 1:1 binary compatible fork of RHEL 8, with an effortless migration path from CentOS to AlmaLinux. Future RHEL releases will also be forked into a new AlmaLinux release." From the AlmaLinux blog:We've collected community feedback and built our new beta release around what you would expect from an enterprise-level Linux distribution...inspired by the community and built by the engineers and talent behind CloudLinux. Visit https://almalinux.org to download the Beta images. With the Beta release deployed, we'd like to ask the community to be involved and provide feedback. We aim to build a Linux distribution entirely from community contributions and feedback. During AlmaLinux Beta, we ask for assistance in testing, documentation, support and future direction for the operating system. Together, we can build a Linux distribution that fills the gap left by the now unsupported CentOS distribution. On Wednesday they'll be hosting a live QA webinar with the AlmaLinux team. And there's also a small AlmaLinux forum on Reddit.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In 2019 two New York Times opinion writers obtained cellphone app data "containing the precise locations of more than 12 million individual smartphones for several months in 2016 and 2017." (It's data that they say is "supposed to be anonymous, but it isn't. We found celebrities, Pentagon officials and average Americans.") Now they've obtained a remarkable new trove of data, "this time following the smartphones of thousands of Trump supporters, rioters and passers-by in Washington, D.C., on January 6, as Donald Trump's political rally turned into a violent insurrection." And here the stakes for a privacy violation were even higher:[The data set] shows how Trump supporters traveled from South Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Kentucky to the nation's capital, with pings tracing neatly along major highways, in the days before the attack. Stops at gas stations, restaurants and motels dot the route like bread crumbs, each offering corroborating details. In many cases, these trails lead from the Capitol right back to their homes... Unlike the data we reviewed in 2019, this new data included a remarkable piece of information: a unique ID for each user that is tied to a smartphone. This made it even easier to find people, since the supposedly anonymous ID could be matched with other databases containing the same ID, allowing us to add real names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and other information about smartphone owners in seconds. The IDs, called mobile advertising identifiers, allow companies to track people across the internet and on apps. They are supposed to be anonymous, and smartphone owners can reset them or disable them entirely. Our findings show the promise of anonymity is a farce. Several companies offer tools to allow anyone with data to match the IDs with other databases. We were quickly able to match more than 2,000 supposedly anonymous devices in the data set with email addresses, birthdays, ethnicities, ages and more... Smartphone users will never know if they are included in the data or whether their precise movements were sold. There are no laws forcing companies to disclose what the data is used for or for how long. There are no legal requirements to ever delete the data. Even if anyone could figure out where records of their locations were sold, in most states, you can't request that the data be deleted. Their movements could be bought and sold to innumerable parties for years. And the threat that those movements could be tied back to their identity will never go away. If the January 6 rioters didn't know before, they surely know now the cost of leaving a digital footprint... The article argues that de-anonymizing the data "gets easier by the day," warning this latest data set demonstrates "the looming threat to our liberties posed by a surveillance economy that monetizes the movements of the righteous and the wicked alike." But it also warns that "The location-tracking industry exists because those in power allow it to exist... The dark truth is that, despite genuine concern from those paying attention, there's little appetite to meaningfully dismantle this advertising infrastructure that undergirds unchecked corporate data collection. "This collection will only grow more sophisticated."Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The U.S. agency overseeing elections has "quietly weakened a key element of proposed security standards..." reports the Associated Press, "raising concern among voting-integrity experts that many such systems will remain vulnerable to hacking."The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is poised to approve its first new security standards in 15 years after an arduous process involving multiple technical and elections community bodies and open hearings. But ahead of a scheduled February 10 ratification vote by commissioners, the EAC leadership tweaked the draft standards to remove language that stakeholders interpreted as banning wireless modems and chips from voting machines as a condition for federal certification. The mere presence of such wireless hardware poses unnecessary risks for tampering that could alter data or programs on election systems, say computer security specialists and activists, some of whom have long complained than the EAC bends too easily to industry pressure. Agency leaders argue that overall, the revised guidelines represent a major security improvement. They stress that the rules require manufacturers to disable wireless functions present in any machines, although the wireless hardware can remain. In a February 3 letter to the agency, computer scientists and voting integrity activists say the change "profoundly weakens voting system security and will introduce very real opportunities to remotely attack election systems." They demand the wireless hardware ban be restored... The ban on wireless hardware in voting machines would force vendors who currently build systems with off-the-shelf components to rely on more expensive custom-built hardware, said EAC Chair Benjamin Hovland, which could hurt competition in an industry already dominated by a trio of companies. He also argued that the guidelines are voluntary, although many state laws are predicated on them... Hovland stressed that the amended guidelines say all wireless capability must be disabled in voting equipment. But computer experts say that if the hardware is present, the software that activates it can be introduced. And the threat is not just from malign actors but also from the vendors and their clients, who could enable the wireless capability for maintenance purposes then forget to turn it off, leaving machines vulnerable... Experts are pushing for universal use of hand-marked paper ballots and better audits to bolster confidence in election results.Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Launched in July, China's probe "Tianwen-1" is now approaching an orbit around Mars — and it's sent back its first picture. Slashdot reader AmiMoJo spotted this report in the Guardian:The photo released by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) shows geological features including the Schiaparelli crater and the Valles Marineris, a vast stretch of canyons on the Martian surface. The photo was taken from about 1.4m miles away (2.2m kilometres), said the CNSA, with the spacecraft since reaching 1.1 million kilometres from the planet... The five-tonne Tianwen-1 includes a Mars orbiter, lander, and a rover that will study the planet's soil. China hopes to land the rover in May in Utopia, a massive impact basin... China has poured billions of dollars into its military-led space programme and first sent a human into space in 2003. It is aiming to assemble a space station in Earth orbit by 2022.Read more of this story at Slashdot.