SoylentNews

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

hubie writes:No one here will be surprised by the size and reach of the data broker industry and the desire to identify and track individual users. From a data standpoint, the majority of human interaction now happens on mobile devices, and these devices end up collecting and storing a very large amount of our information. US privacy laws allow sharing and selling of anonymized data, which are those that do not contain Personally Identifying Information (PII), and the much ballyhooed GDPR imposes strict inform and consent requirements on collecting and using personal information. To comply with these laws many entities simply throw away all the personal information and keep the rest of the data, which sounds like a great thing until one realizes that it turns out to be relatively easy to deanonymize this data using otherwise innocuous data on the mobile device anyway.The reason that so many apps report to third parties what other apps are installed on a phone is because these other apps create a remarkably unique fingerprint of each person. The aggregate of the installed apps and their relative usage turn out to be very unique for over 99% of people. So ad blockers can block cookies, and users can reset things like the Android Advertisement ID, but users can't reset or fake their app usage stats.Some researchers looked at a data set of millions of people spanning 12 months and 33 countries and found that 91% of the people could be identified by looking at just the usage of four apps. They also looked at seasonal and cultural differences for identifying users. They found that people have more unique app fingerprints during summer months making them easier to identify then. They also saw significant variations in uniqueness across countries and found that American users are the easiest to identify while Finns have the least unique app fingerprints.Sekara, V., Alessandretti, L., Mones, E. et al. Temporal and cultural limits of privacy in smartphone app usage [open]. Sci Rep 11, 3861 (2021).

hubie writes:From a recent Scientific Reports paper:

takyon writes:NVIDIA Nerfs Ethereum Hash Rate & Launches CMP Dedicated Mining Hardware

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:Uber Shuts Down App That Told Drivers If Uber Underpaid Them:

takyon writes:Million-year-old mammoth DNA rewrites animal's evolutionary tree

An Anonymous Coward writes:https://if50.substack.com/p/1977-zork

takyon writes:Unique life forms accidentally found under 3,000 feet of Antarctica ice, scientists say

martyb writes:Touchdown! NASA's Mars Perseverance Rover Safely Lands on Red Planet:First image from surface. (Members of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover team watch in mission control as the first images arrive moments after the spacecraft successfully touched down on Mars, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:SDK Bug Lets Attackers Spy on User's Video Calls Across Dating, Healthcare Apps:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:Plastic recycling results in rare metals being found in children's toys and food packaging:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:An anniversary for great justice: Remembering "All Your Base" 20 years later:

AnonTechie writes:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Mutation in SARS-CoV-2 spike protein renders virus up to eight times more infectious:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

[2021-02-18 21:02:56 UTC; UPDATE: Landing successful! Picture received from the surface!]7 Minutes to Mars: NASA's Perseverance Rover Attempts Most Dangerous Landing YetEratosthenes writes:Video at NASA on YouTube on the Perseverance landing.Helicopter!!NASA's Perseverance Rover Prepares for Mars Landingupstart writes in with an IRC submission:NASA's Perseverance rover prepares for Mars landing:

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:Unlocking the mystery behind skeletal aging:

takyon writes:Samsung's New HBM2 Memory Thinks for Itself: 1.2 TFLOPS of Embedded Processing Power

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Runaway1956 writes:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Star employees get most of the credit - and blame:

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

KritonK writes:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:iOS 14.5 wants to keep your internet use well away from Google:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Dr. Fauci wins $1 million Dan David prize for 'defending science':

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes: A tiny crystal device could boost gravitational wave detectors to reveal the birth cries of black holes:

martyb writes:On Monday February 17 2014, at 02:06AM SoylentNews announced itself to the world!(That's exactly seven years ago from the time this story posts.) Does it seem possible? I know it certainly amazes me.A lot can happen in a year. Here are some items of note. As always, if you are not interested in this kind of stuff, ignore this post — a new story will be along shortly. Otherwise, this story continues below the fold.

takyon writes:Pine64 unveils Quartz64 SBC powered by Rockchip RK3566 SoC

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

Eratosthenes writes:Science Mag says:

In Violation of Einstein, Black Holes Might Have 'Hair'upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:what-color-is-the-virtual-hair-of-black-holesIn Violation of Einstein, Black Holes Might Have 'Hair':

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Scientists prove that deepfake detectors can be duped:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Zero-days under active exploit are keeping Windows users busy:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Apple is offering free Apple Watch repairs to fix Power Reserve charging issue:

Liberia on Alert for Ebola After Neighbouring Guinea Reports Outbreakupstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:Liberia on Alert for Ebola After Neighbouring Guinea Reports Outbreak:

[UPDATE (2021-02-16 14:46:07 UTC): mea culpa! Corrected temperature comparison of Boca Chica vs. Chicago. Also, noted and corrected temperature error in quoted text. --martyb]Boca Chica, Texas is located at the southernmost point in Texas and is where SpaceX builds and launches its next-generation Starship orbital rockets. At 2:30 PM local time, the predicted high temperature for the day was 17°F (-8.3°C) which was colder than nearly as cold as Chicago, Illinois where the day's high temperature was predicted to reach 15°F (-9.4°C) .upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Millions without power in Texas as snow storm slams US:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Is This Beverly Hills Cop Playing Sublime's 'Santeria' to Avoid Being Live-Streamed?:

DannyB writes:Parler is back online after a month of downtime:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:Australia's eSafety Commissioner will be able to force platforms to get rid of BDSM and fetish content:

AnonTechie writes:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:Hildebrand's hacker really a 'hero':

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:No, COBOL Is Not a Dead Language:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for c0lo:Hubble Uncovers Concentration of Small Black Holes:

hubie writes:Wind speed is something that is hard to qualitatively describe from person to person. One person's playful breeze is another's biting annoyance. For a very long time this was a problem in the maritime domain so a couple of centuries ago Francis Beaufort came up with the Beaufort Scale. This scale ties wind speed to objective observations. It was first applied to sea state, but it was later extended for observations on land.There is a research field growing up around the idea of "social sensing", where social media platforms, particularly Twitter, can be used for real-time detection and tracking of natural events, such as earthquakes, forest fires, air quality, etc. A group of researchers from the University of Exeter have established a social Beaufort scale using Twitter. They looked at 110k weather-related tweets in the UK spanning two years to see if they could detect wind-related effects and estimate the wind magnitudes by looking at the language and emojis used, similar to what is done with the Beaufort scale (well, except for the emojis). They found that a simple text classifier can be used to detect high-wind events fairly accurately and the severity of these events can be inferred by considering the tweet volume.Journal Reference:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:Cold sores: Discovery reveals how stress, illness and even sunburn trigger flareups:

An Anonymous Coward writes:The Russian company said the employee sold access to 4,887 user email accounts.https://www.zdnet.com/article/yandex-said-it-caught-an-employee-selling-access-to-users-inboxes/

Mass Brewery Uncovered in Egypt May be Oldest in the Worldupstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:Mass brewery uncovered in Egypt may be oldest in the world:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:Marvel At UAE Hope Orbiter's First Image Of Mars:

upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:AMD Is Currently Hiring More Linux Engineers - Phoronix: