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Submission + - German Investigators Shut Down Biggest Illegal Marketplace On the Darknet (apnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: German prosecutors said Tuesday that they have taken down what they believe was the biggest illegal marketplace on the darknet and arrested its suspected operator. The site, known as DarkMarket, was shut down on Monday, prosecutors in the southwestern city of Koblenz said. All sorts of drugs, forged money, stolen or forged credit cards, anonymous mobile phone SIM cards and malware were among the things offered for sale there, they added. German investigators were assisted in their months-long probe by U.S. authorities and by Australian, British, Danish, Swiss, Ukrainian and Moldovan police.

The marketplace had nearly 500,000 users and more than 2,400 vendors, prosecutors said. They added that it processed more than 320,000 transactions, and Bitcoin and Monero cryptocurrency to the value of more than 140 million euros ($170 million) were exchanged. The suspected operator, a 34-year-old Australian man, was arrested near the German-Danish border. Prosecutors said a judge has ordered him held in custody pending possible formal charges, and he hasn’t given any information to investigators. More than 20 servers in Moldova and Ukraine were seized, German prosecutors said. They hope to find information on those servers about other participants in the marketplace.

Submission + - Identical Twins Are Not So Identical, Study Suggests (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Genetic differences between identical twins can begin very early in embryonic development, according to a study that researchers say has implications for examining the effects of nature versus nurture. Identical – or monozygotic – twins come from a single fertilised egg that splits in two. They are important research subjects because they are thought to have minimal genetic differences. This means that when physical or behavioural differences emerge, environmental factors are presumed to be the likely cause. But the new research, published on Thursday in the journal Nature Genetics, suggests the role of genetic factors in shaping these differences has been underestimated.

[Kari Stefansson, the co-author of the paper and head of Iceland's deCODE genetics] and his team sequenced the genomes of 387 pairs of identical twins and their parents, spouses and children in order to track genetic mutations. They measured mutations that occurred during embryonic growth and found that identical twins differed by an average of 5.2 early developmental mutations. In 15% of twins, the number of diverging mutations was higher. When a mutation happened in the first few weeks of embryonic development, it would be expected to be widespread both in an individual’s cells and in those of their offspring.

In one of the pairs of twins studied, for example, a mutation was present in all cells in one sibling’s body – meaning it is likely to have happened very early in development – but not at all in the other twin. Stefansson said that out of the initial mass that would go on to form the individuals, "one of the twins is made out of the descendants of the cell where the mutation took place and nothing else," while the other was not. “These mutations are interesting because they allow you to begin to explore the way in which twinning happens.”

Submission + - Autopsies Reveal The Terrible Damage COVID-19 Can Inflict on The Human Brain (sciencealert.com) 1

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: As COVID-19 relentlessly infects more and more of us, scientists are getting a close look at the strange and frightening damage it can inflict on our bodies. We've known since early in the pandemic this disease wreaks havoc on more than just the respiratory system, also causing gastrointestinal conditions, heart damage and blood clotting disorders.

Now, a year into the pandemic, in-depth autopsies of COVID-19 patients have revealed greater details of widespread inflammation and damage in brain tissues. This may help explain the deluge of neurological symptoms that have manifested in some patients, from headaches, memory loss, dizziness, weakness and hallucinations to more severe seizures and strokes. Some estimate that up to50 percent of those hospitalised with COVID-19 could have neurological symptoms that can leave people struggling to do even common daily tasks like preparing a meal. "We were completely surprised. Originally, we expected to see damage that is caused by a lack of oxygen," said physician and clinical director at National Institute of Health (NIH), Avindra Nath. "Instead, we saw multifocal areas of damage that is usually associated with strokes and neuroinflammatory diseases."

Submission + - Twitter Suspends Donald Trump's Account Following Storming of US Capitol (twitter.com)

Submitted by mobby_6kl
mobby_6kl writes: As the situation at the US Capitol escalated today, with hundreds of people storming the building and forcing evacuation of the House and Senate, so has situation online. With Donald Trump's Tweets earlier today encouraging the protests, Twitter has finally taken the step of suspending the account for at least 12 hours, if the offending Tweets are deleted, or indefinitely, if not.

As a result of the unprecedented and ongoing violent situation in Washington, D.C., we have required the removal of three @realDonaldTrump Tweets that were posted earlier today for repeated and severe violations of our Civic Integrity policy.

This means that the account of @realDonaldTrump will be locked for 12 hours following the removal of these Tweets. If the Tweets are not removed, the account will remain locked.

Future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.

This move, essentially, answers the question of if, and when, Twitter would police the account of a sitting president. This follows a period where some posts with misleading information or lies about the election were being marked as such, and some Tweets had sharing, replies, and likes disabled.

Submission + - Deleting Your Facebook Account Forfeits Oculus VR Games You Already Paid For (polygon.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In August, Facebook announced that consumers who use its Oculus virtual reality headsets would be required to log in with their Facebook accounts in order to play games. The transition went into effect earlier this month, and it comes with a catch. If at any point you decide to delete your Facebook account, you immediately forfeit your access to any games or VR experiences you purchased through the Oculus store. The gotcha was spotted last week, and began to surface first on Twitter, only to be confirmed Friday by the team at UploadVR.

According to Facebook, those who create a new Oculus account will be required to use their Facebook credentials. Those who previously used a separate username and password to access the Oculus store have two years before the transition will be forced upon them. Once users flip the switch, they’re bound by a new end-user license agreement that formally entangles their VR purchases and their Facebook account. “Deleting your Facebook account will also delete your Oculus information,” warns Facebook in the Deactivation and Deletion section of its iOS app. “This includes your app purchases and your achievements. You will no longer be able to return any apps and will lose any existing store credits.”

Submission + - French bar owners arrested for offering free WiFi but not keeping logs (cozyit.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: At least five bar owners in Grenoble, France have been arrested for providing WiFi at their businesses without keeping logs. The bar owners were arrested under a 2006 law that technically classifies WiFi hotspot providing establishments as ISPs, and requires them to store one year’s worth of logs or connection records for anti-terrorism purposes. This requirement is in place even if the WiFi network is password protected.

That all public WiFi hotspots in France are required by law to be logging shouldn’t be too surprising.BFM Businessnoted that most large providers of free WiFi like hotels, conference centers, airports, and such do so with business packages that include this logging. However, it seems that most people aren’t aware that even small businesses like bars, cafes, nightclubs, and restaurants that offer WiFi to their patrons are faced with these logging requirements. One of the arrested bar owners noted that the relevant organization, Umih, never noted this requirement when renewing his license: “Nobody, not even the professionals of Umih who provide compulsory training as part of a license IV resumption, to me never said I should keep this history.”

Submission + - EXIF file information embarrass the White House (twitter.com) 1

Submitted by Camel Pilot
Camel Pilot writes: The Whitehouse released two jpeg file format pictures of Trump relentlessly working from Walter Reed. The photos were taken in different rooms with different papers on the desk, one with his jacket on and another with his jacket off to make it appear he was working all day long from different offices. On Twitter, the Whitehouse Deputy Communications Director and Deputy Press Secretary Brian Morganstern posted the pictures with the caption "The guy’s a machine". Ivanka Trump shared one of the pictures on her Twitter page, adding: "Nothing can stop him from working for the American people. RELENTLESS!"

However, others on Twitter (Jon Ostrower) examined the EXIF information on the files and quickly noted they were taken less than 10 minutes apart.

https://twitter.com/jonostrowe...

The "communications" director apparently didn't know about jpeg file formats and the extra information stored in the file. Prior to finding out the photos where taken a few minutes apart others zoomed into the picture and revealed that Trump was signing his name in the middle of a blank piece of paper.

https://www.newsweek.com/trump...

Submission + - Rat That Sniffs Out Land Mines Receives Award For Bravery (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The medal awarded on Friday lauded the “lifesaving bravery and devotion to duty” for work detecting land mines in Cambodia. Its recipient: a rat named Magawa. Magawais the first rat to receive the award —agold medalbestowed by the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, a British charity, that is often called the “animal’s George Cross” after an honor usually given to civilians that recognizes acts of bravery and heroism. Not since the fictional Remy of the 2007 Disney-Pixar film “Ratatouille” has a rat done so much to challenge the public’s view of the animals as creatures more commonly seen scuttling through sewers and the subway: Magawa has discovered 39 land mines and 28 pieces of unexploded ordnance, and helped clear more than 1.5 million square feet of land over the past four years.

More than five million land mines are thought to have been laid in Cambodia during the ousting of the Khmer Rouge and internal conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. Parts of the country are also littered with unexploded ordnance dropped in United States airstrikes during the Vietnam War,a 2019 reportfrom the Congressional Research Service found. Since 1979, more than 64,000 people have been injured by land mines and other explosives in Cambodia, and more than 25,000 amputees have been recorded there,according to the HALO Trust, the world’s largest humanitarian land mine clearance charity.

Magawa, the most successful rat to have taken part in the program, was trained to detect TNT, the chemical compound within explosives. The ability to sniff out TNT makes him much faster than any person in searching for land mines, as he can ignore scrap metal that would usually be picked up by a metal detector. He can search an area the size of a tennis court in 30 minutes, whereas a person with a metal detector would usually take four days to search an area of that size. When he finds a mine, he signals to his handler by scratching at the earth above it. Unlike humans, Magawa is too light to detonate a mine, so there is minimal risk of injury.

Submission + - Open Source Considered Harmful?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Wednesday Nature published Array programming with NumPy. NumPy, the primary array programming library for Python, has an essential role in research analysis pipelines in fields as diverse as physics, chemistry, astronomy, geoscience, biology, psychology, materials science, engineering, finance and economics. The paper's publication, NumPy explained, was a way to give the paper's 26 unsung and largely unpaid authors and Open Source contributors long overdue credit needed to receive grant funding and produce more high quality software. And while the paper did draw well-deserved thanks and praise, its all-male authorship and Open Source origin also drew the ire of university, government and nonprofit employees, who took to Twitter to slam NumPy and its volunteer contributors.

"For the love of everything ... you couldn't find ONE WOMAN?" tweeted a Cognitive Analytics Prof. "The lack of gender and racial diversity among the 26 authors for NumPy is stunning," agreed an NSF Program Director. "[NumPy's] 'we are open to women contributors' approach," tweeted the 29,000 member Women+ in ML/DS, "is not producing results. It's not enough when it comes to trying to recruit women into a historically all-male group. *Active* recruitment is required. It's not easy & takes a lot of effort." A Computational Biology Prof, who also blasted the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative for funding SciPy, added: "There is something deeply flawed with SciPy, The recent @numpy_team paper just published with 26 male authors and 0 women is a symptom." Ironically, NumPy noted its $200,000 CZI grant (tied to "diversifying the core team beyond the developer role") has allowed it to add women to the project in paid positions. Some NumPy critics agreed with historical assessments that unpaid labor is a blocker to OSS participation by women and minorities.

While diversity in OSS and tech in general is a very real problem, there are certainly much bigger fish to fry than NumPy's small team. OSS work can already be a pretty thankless and all-consuming task. Will public shaming of Open Source projects and casting aspersions on the character of their volunteer contributors for failing to also satisfactorily address what may be larger ills of society — especially when that criticism comes from well-paid critics who enjoy the support of well-staffed diversity teams at institutions with large endowments — lead to more diverse and increased Open Source volunteerism? Or could it simply spell the end of participation in Open Source as an unpaid side project? And would such a loss be a bad or a good thing?

Submission + - SPAM: Pilot landing at LAX reports 'guy in a jetpack' flying near plane

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: The pilot called air traffic control to report a man wearing a jetpack flying near the plane.

Tower tapes released detail the pilot's exchange.

Pilot: "Tower, American 1997, we just passed a guy in a jetpack."

Tower: "American 1997, OK, thank you. Were they off to your left or right side?"

Pilot: "Off the left side, maybe 300 yards or so, about our altitude."

The jet was flying at an altitude of 3,000 feet at the time of the encounter.

The tower then warned other approaching flights to be on the lookout for a man in the jetpack.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Disease Threatens 99% of the Banana Market (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the 1950s, Panama Disease wiped out the dominant type of banana that was imported worldwide. Banana-growers had to switch to a different strain, the Cavendish banana, at great expense. Now, a new study finds that a more virulent strain of the disease is directly threatening the Cavendish banana. Banana plants are dying from it throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. It hasn't reached Latin America yet, which is good — that's where the vast majority of the world's bananas are produced. But the researchers say it's just a matter of time. "The latest strain is likely to put the risks of monoculture on display once more. And while scientists might find or breed a better one in the mean time, the reality is that this time around we don't have a formidable replacement that's resistant to the new strain of Panama Disease. Once it reaches Latin America, as it is expected to, it could be only a matter of decades before the most popular banana on the planet once again disappears."

Comment Re:Missing Option. (Score 1) 410

by McSnarf (#44900027) Attached to: The last time I used a dial-up modem was...

Heh heh... At 52, this is similar to the experiences of my youth. At that time, when 300 baud couplers and HUGE (as in box the size of something you could keep canadian snow boots in) 2400 baud modems, there weren't even LAWS agains that kind of stuff in Germany. And let me guess - you used DATEX-P, an X.25 network, using a stolen NUI.

Oh well. BS2000. For those who do not know what it was: Take some IBM OS meant for a /360 (ancient even at that time), remove all attempts at flexibilitiy. Localize it into German, making sure not to even use one word of English and create a vile command processor. The world's only terminals with an Enter key labelled "DÜM/DÜZ".

At that time, you'd find unprotected SINTRAN-III machines by Norsk Data at CERN...

Comment Re:Can someone explain what they did wrong? (Score 2, Informative) 1671

by McSnarf (#31745250) Attached to: Wikileaks Releases Video of Journalist Killings

Another former soldier here. From a country which learned that war means your country is in ruins afterwards - and you will probably have lost someone you love. War is more than just sending heroes out to foreign countries to kill the "bad guys".

Of course, I would expect everybody up to NCO level to be against the conventions, as it makes their life more difficult. Working to international conventions requires judgement and thinking. But of course, life would be much easier if you could fire at civilians at will, use land mines, chemical weapons, napalm and many other toys.

I've seen the video. In addition, I read the official report, which is ALSO available online.
Look for
"INVESTIGATION INTO CIVILIAN
CASUALTIES RESULTING FROM AN
ENGAGEMENT ON 12 JULY 2007 IN
THE NEW BAGHDAD DISTRICT OF
BAGHDAD, IRAQ

Report of Investigation UP AR 15-6
MAJ , Investigating Officer
2ND BRIGADE COMBAT TEAM
2ND INFANTRY DIVISION (MND-B)"

The official report shows the following in Exhibit O:
AK found on the ground.
RPG-7 photo redacted, nothing to be seen.

In Exhibit R, we see photos which appear to be taken by the journalist before being shot at. You can recognize in detail a US HMMWV in telephoto range.

So, yes, there was at least an AK rifle and the helicopter crew might have at least good reason to see that a RPG attack was imminent. Exhibit C mentions "Probable Telephoto lens", but is this obvious to trigger-happy kids in a gunship? I doubt it. Plus they don't want to be responsible for the results of not taking action.

(Read paragraph 6 on page 12 of 43.)

The helicopter crew reports and requests permission to fire.

So far, this is more or less an unavoidable chain of events. Most likely a mistake, but given the circumstances, understandable.

But...

Have we learned to shoot at wounded combatants? At people trying to help the wounded? Which are obviously not returning fire?

There's the war crime.

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