SUNDAY, 05 JULY 2020, 02:08
Long-time Slashdot reader stikves reminded us that a committee in the U.S. Senate passed an amended version of the “EARN IT” act on Thursday. And this new version could do more than just end personal end-to-end encryption, warns Engadget:The other major concern opponents of the EARN IT Act raise has to do with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which says that companies are not...
The TraceTogether Token is designed to make an app more effective, but worries privacy campaigners.
Iwastheone shared this article from CBS News:Experts and cave divers in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula have found ocher mines that are some of the oldest on the continent. Ancient skeletons were found in the narrow, twisting labyrinths of now-submerged sinkhole caves… The discovery of remains of human-set fires, stacked mining debris, simple stone tools, navigational aids and digging sites suggest...
Tuesday Microsoft published two out-of-band security updates to patch two vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Windows Codecs Library, reports ZDNet:Tracked as CVE-2020-1425 & CVE-2020-1457, the two bugs only impact Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 distributions… Microsoft said the two security flaws can be exploited with the help of a specially crafted image file. If the malformed images are...
The science has been settled to the highest degree, so now the key to progress is understanding our psychological reactions
It took me much longer than it should have to realise that educating people about climate change science was not enough. Due perhaps to my personality type (highly rational, don’t talk to me about horoscopes, please) and my background (the well-educated daughter of a...
Hydroxychloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir not found to help patients in hospital
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The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that it was discontinuing its trials of the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine and combination HIV drug lopinavir/ritonavir for patients in hospital with Covid-19 after they failed to reduce...
“They’ve been up there about a month now, floating around on the International Space Station, keeping tabs on their ride home,” reports the Washington Post:”Certainly, the highlight for both Doug and I was the initial arrival at space station, coming through the hatch again and being on board after several years of working on a new spacecraft,” Behnken said in an interview from the station this...
Imperial College doctors with AR glasses examine patients as trainees watch remotely
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A flock of students stumbling after a consultant on a ward round has long been a familiar sight in hospitals. Perhaps not for much longer though – a university has pioneered the use of augmented reality to allow students to take part from...
Nicholas Carr authored The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains back in 2010. This week he offered an up-to-date assessment in his newest interview with Vox co-founder Ezra Klein. “The point of this conversation is not that the internet is bad, nor that it is good,” Klein writes. “It’s that it is changing us, just as every medium before it has. We need to see those changes clearly...
This week finally saw the federal sentencing of a former Yahoo software engineer who “admitted to using his access through his work at the company to hack into about 6,000 Yahoo accounts” back in 2018, according to America’s Department of Justice:Ruiz admitted to targeting accounts belonging to younger women, including his personal friends and work colleagues. He made copies of images and...
“A new study found low to moderate drinking may improve cognitive function for White middle-aged or older adults,” reports CNN:The findings support prior research which found that, generally, one standard drink a day for women and two a day for men — which is the US guidance — appears to offer some cognitive benefits… “There is now a lot of observational evidence showing that light to moderate...
Osteocalcin, a hormone produced in the bones, could one day provide treatments for age-related issues such as muscle and memory loss
Gérard Karsenty was a young scientist trying to make a name for himself in the early 1990s when he first stumbled upon a finding that would go on to transform our understanding of bone, and the role it plays in our body.
Karsenty had become interested in...
Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: In 2019’s The Two Codes Your Kids Need to Know, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman reported that of all the skills and knowledge the College Board tested young people for, it determined that mastering “two codes” — computer science and the U.S. Constitution — were the most correlated to success in college and in life. On Wednesday, Rhode Island...
“American consumers pay significantly more for cellphone service than people in many other countries,” reports the New York Times. It’s in an article headlined “The U.S. Is Lagging Behind Many Rich Countries. These Charts Show Why.”Although executives’ salaries have risen in most countries, relative to those of workers, in recent decades, the trend is more extreme in the U.S… The minimum wage...
If I hadn’t experienced anxiety and agoraphobia and the therapy that resulted from them, I wouldn’t now understand human complexities as I do, writes Charlotte Levin
I sometimes wonder about my parallel life: the one in which I attended drama school, became a respected actor, travelled the world and ended up marrying Louis Theroux after meeting him at an awards ceremony. The life in which I...
There was excitement for South African amateur astronomer Clyde Foster this week when NASA’s Juno team referred to a discovery he made as “Clyde’s Spot”.
Plus: A massive crime bust in Europe, a warning from US Cyber Command, and more of the week’s top security news.
U.S. technology titans face a looming test of their free-speech credentials in Hong Kong as China’s new national-security law for the city demands local authorities take measures to supervise and regulate its uncensored internet. From a report: Facebook and its Instagram service, Twitter and YouTube, a unit of Alphabet’s Google, operate freely in the city even as they have been shut out or...
Picnic’s machine is able to put together 300 pizzas an hour, but can a human make something tastier?
As researchers tracked his flight over 27 countries, a cuckoo became a celebrity and raised questions about how climate change could affect his species’ travel.
A week after launching investigations into many claims of harassment and misconduct, Ubisoft’s CEO gave an update on what the company is doing to change things. From a report: In a letter posted on its website and emailed to employees, Yves Guillemot said “the types of inappropriate behavior we have recently learned about cannot and will not be tolerated.” That’s sharply in contrast to reports...