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Submission + - HK Media Tycoon Jimmy Lai Arrested Under National Security Law, Top Aide Says. (theepochtimes.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has been arrested for what the pro-Beijing government says is suspected collusion with foreign forces under the new national security law, his top aide said on Twitter, in what is the highest-profile arrest yet under the legislation.

Lai has been one of the most prominent democracy activists in the Chinese-ruled city and an ardent critic of Beijing, which imposed the sweeping new law on Hong Kong on June 30, drawing condemnation from Western countries.

The new security law punishes anything China’s communist party considers subversion, secession, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.

Submission + - Study: Saving pandas led to downfall of other animals (upi.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Since the giant panda reserves were set up in China during the 1960s, leopards have disappeared from 81% of reserves, snow leopards from 38%, wolves from 77% and Asian wild dogs from 95%.

Researchers found with the dwindling numbers of leopards and wolves, deer and livestock have mostly roamed free without a threat from natural predators, causing damage to natural habitats for surrounding wildlife, including the pandas.

Samuel Turvey, of the Zoological Society of London, said that while protecting umbrella species have proven successful in many incidences, researchers cannot ignore continued human activity on the wider ecosystem and how non-targeted species are affected.

Submission + - SPAM: Fear of Authoritarian Regimes Is Pushing the Film Industry to Self-Censor

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The most glaring example is the growing wariness of U.S. studios to do anything that might imperil their standing with the Chinese government. China's box office is as large as the American one, and entertainment is above all a business. So Hollywood sanitizes or censors topics that Beijing doesn't like. But the phenomenon is not limited to China, nor is it all about revenue. Studios, writers, and producers increasingly fear they will be hacked or harmed if they portray any foreign autocrats in a negative light, be it Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

It wasn't always this way. In the 1930s, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator took on Adolf Hitler. Later, Martin Scorsese's Kundun shone a light on the fate of Tibet, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being and The Hunt for Red October made the Cold War come alive. Today, the market power of China—and the cyberpower of some rogue states—is making studios and creatives think twice about producing such daring, overtly political films. And as the retreat from the kind of films that once bolstered American soft power accelerates, Hollywood is running out of real-life antagonists.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Xinjiang Shows We Haven't Learnt a Thing from Auschwitz (newsweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just when you thought China's brutality could not shock any further, chilling footage emerged last week of Uyghurs, with heads shaven, being blindfolded, shackled and herded onto trains, headed for these camps.

I am loath to make Holocaust comparisons, especially as one whose family both survived and perished during this darkest of chapters in modern human history, but it is impossible not to draw such parallels in the face of overwhelming evidence of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing and genocide by China's Communist regime.

The main difference today, though, is that during the Holocaust, the Allies claimed they did not know about Auschwitz, whereas China's wanton brutality is unfolding in full view, right before us in real time.

To its credit, the United States is, thus far, the only country that has been prepared to stand up to China and take any kind of meaningful action.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called Chinese government actions in Xianjiang the "stain of the century," and asserted that China is "in a league of its own" on human rights violations.

How bad does it have to get before Apple, Google, Microsoft and the NBA say 'enough'?

Submission + - Intel 7nm delayed (tomshardware.com)

Submitted by Build6
Build6 writes: Intel has admitted their 7nm process is not going to make their previously announced schedule -
(1) did Apple know this was coming? that could have factored into their decision into switching over to ARM *now*, as opposed to later
(2) looks like it's AMD's game to lose, now

Submission + - How bats have outsmarted viruses—including coronaviruses—for 65 mill (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Although the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened more than 14 million people, bats contract similar viruses all the time without experiencing any symptoms. Now, the newly-sequenced genomes of six species spanning the bat family tree reveal how they’ve been outsmarting viruses for their 65 million years of evolution: They have lost genes that make the immune system over-react to infection and have gained others that help control viral invaders. Their genomes contain debris from hundreds of previous viral invaders—and also reveal an earlier-than-expected origin for bat echolocation.

Submission + - Were humans living in a Mexican cave during the last ice age? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: At first glance, Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico’s Zacatecas state is an unlikely place to find signs of early humans, let alone evidence that might change the story of the peopling of the Americas. It sits a daunting 1000 meters above a valley, overlooking a desert landscape in the mountains north of Zacatecas. Getting there requires a 4- or 5-hour uphill scramble over a moonscape of jagged boulders. But in the soil below the cave’s floor, a team led by Autonomous University of Zacatecas, University City Siglo XXI, archaeologist Ciprian Ardelean dug up almost 2000 stone objects they think are tools. By combining state-of-the-art dating methods, the team found that the oldest were deposited 26,000 years ago—more than 10,000 years before any other known human occupation in the region. That was the height of the last ice age, when ice covered much of North America, and long before researchers thought the Americas were settled. But some other researchers remain skeptical, in part because they aren’t convinced the artifacts are tools.

Submission + - Russian Elite Given Experimental Covid-19 Vaccine Since April (bloomberg.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scores of Russia’s business and political elite have been given early access to an experimental vaccine against Covid-19, according to people familiar with the effort, as the country races to be among the first to develop an inoculation.

Top executives at companies including aluminum giant United Co. Rusal, as well as billionaire tycoons and government officials began getting shots developed by the state-run Gamaleya Institute in Moscow as early as April, the people said. They declined to be identified as the information isn’t public.

Peskov’s comments followed a Health Ministry statement that said only participants in Gamaleya’s trials are currently eligible for the jabs.

While the new shots are “safe” because they’re based on proven vaccines for other diseases, their effectiveness has yet to be determined, according to Sergei Netesov, a former executive at Vector, a state-run virology center in Novosibirsk, Siberia, that’s also working on an inoculation.

“Those who take it do so at their own risk,” Netesov said.

Russia has reported more than 750,000 cases of Covid-19, the fourth-largest total in the world, and Gamaleya’s program is on a faster track than many developers in the West. RDIF chief Kirill Dmitriev said last week phase 3 trials will start Aug. 3 and include thousands of people in Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with the vaccine distributed nationally as early as September. Western researchers typically run phase 3 trials for months to better understand safety and effectiveness.

Submission + - Uber drivers to launch legal bid to uncover app's algorithm (theguardian.com)

Submitted by AmiMoJo
AmiMoJo writes: Minicab drivers will launch a legal bid to uncover secret computer algorithms used by Uber to manage their work in a test case that could increase transparency for millions of gig economy workers across Europe. Two UK drivers are demanding to see the huge amounts of data the ride-sharing company collects on them and how this is used to exert management control, including through automated decision-making that invisibly shapes their jobs.

The case is being brought on Monday by the UK-based App Drivers and Couriers Union in the district court in Amsterdam, where the international headquarters of the $56bn (£44.5bn) ride-hailing firm is located. The union said transparency was essential in checking if Uber was exercising discrimination or unequal treatment between drivers. It will also allow drivers to organise and build collective bargaining power over terms of work and pay in a way that is currently impossible.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How many Hong Kongers will Xi arrest? (forbes.com) 1

Submitted by shanen
shanen writes: Motivated by this delusional article from Fortune, though the main technical aspect is how Xi is using computers, especially SNSs, to make his lists of naughty and nice. Already had time to check them twice. But it's no joke, though it might become a Christmas story.

The Fortune article is stupid because Xi is NOT a CEO of any sort. He's a dangerous dictator who incidentally understands economics. The principle at work here is “consolidated losses”. Corporate cancers have learned to lump their losses into one accounting period. The current accounting period is already a HUGE loss because of Covid-19, so suddenly it’s “a good thing” to lump the Hong Kong losses into the bad year. (That’s why I’m sure it’s coming this year (but I must confess I was already wrong in expecting China to put the move on Taiwan last year).)

Another clarification: Xi’s China is NOT “communist” and not even on the road to socialism. So much confusion, but “communism” has really become an empty word, and socialism isn’t even in Xi’s mind these days. There are good reasons to squabble with Chinese companies, but those reasons are about protectionism, not “pure capitalism” (as if such a thing ever existed).

One weird way to think of it is to rank countries on an actual scale of socialist governments. I think we can get pretty strong consensus that the Scandinavian countries are far at the plus-socialist end of the scale. Lots of social services and high taxes, but I think the crucial metrics might be how few people die of such causes as starvation, freezing, or treatable illnesses. Most of the EU is pretty close, and I would argue that the US is not far away, though the tax situation is muddled by radical GOT borrowing against the future. (Who is really paying? Their own grandchildren or future immigrants to America?) I think the extreme minus-socialist end of the scale would be countries like Russia, India, Brazil, and the Philippines.

On that scale it isn’t clear to me where Xi’s China actually fits, but I think it isn’t far from the minus-socialist end. One of the main differences seems to be that Xi is doing a much better job of handling Covid-19 than the other dictators. (But look at Trump for a counterexample?)

Grand prediction time: China will interfere in the US election. Surprise, surprise, NO surprise. However, maybe you’ll be surprised by this simple killing-three-birds-with-one-stone scheme? Mass arrests in Hong Kong, probably in October. Tens of thousands? Due to recent news, now I’d be unsurprised by hundreds of thousands.

Bird One: Resulting massive stock market crash will dispose of the annoying Tweeter bird, Trump.

Bird Two: Massive economic loss in Hong Kong will be consolidated with the Covid-19 losses. “Smart” corporate cancers are experts at lumping the losses to put them behind more quickly.

Bird Three: Lock the Hong Kongers up with the Uighurs, which is actually boiling two birds in the same pot. Transfer economic skills AND Chinese behavior to their fellow “trainees” at the low, low cost of wasting a few years of the lives of the Hong Kong “troublemakers”.

Oh, wait! What about the cost? Won’t the market crash hurt the Chinese, too? Not when they can control the timing and PROFIT from the stock prices because they (actually their hidden front men) will know which way things are going to jump. I’m sure they’ll even short their own Huawei stock for massive PROFIT.

Submission + - Rhode Island Dept. of Education Adding "Two Codes" to "Three Rs"

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In 2019's The Two Codes Your Kids Need to Know, the NY Times' Thomas Friedman reported that of all the skills and knowledge it tested young people for, the College Board 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 announced it's teaming with the College Board to ensure schoolkids study the "Two Codes" as well as the "Three Rs".

From the press release: "The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) and the College Board are launching a partnership to advance two key educational goals: understanding how the U.S. Constitution works and how technology can power solutions to problems facing our world. Two Codes is the College Board’s effort to help students build the knowledge, skills, and agency required to make a difference in the world, specifically by expanding access to Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. Government and Politics and AP Computer Science Principles. [...] Each school will identify two teacher leads, a Computer Science teacher and a Government and Politics teacher, who will coordinate their school’s participation in the program. The leads will receive a stipend of $1,500 per year, and the College Board will provide a broad range of support for the training of teachers and implementation of the effort."

In 2017, RI Governor Gina Raimondo launched the Computer Science for RI (CS4RI) effort in partnership with Microsoft and tech-bankrolled Code.org, saying "Part of turning our economy around and creating jobs is making sure every student, at every level, has access to the new basic skill: computer science." In 2018, the College Board called for making CS a high school graduation requirement, adding that it was willing to put its money where its mouth was: "The College Board is willing to invest serious resources in making this viable — much more so than is in our economic interest to do so," said College Board President David Coleman. "To governors, legislators, to others — if you will help us make this part of the life of schools, we will help fund it." And late last year, the College Board described its state-level efforts to spread AP CS Principles: "Since 2016, the College Board has partnered with Code.org, the Chan [Mark] Zuckerberg Initiative, and state departments of education to spread AP Computer Science Principles statewide [...] This work began in Kentucky and Nevada and later spread to Arizona, Maryland, and Massachusetts."

Submission + - Alleged Backdoors in Huawei Equipment Highlight Covert American Programs (theamericanconservative.com)

Submitted by Nicola Hahn
Nicola Hahn writes: The milieu of professional wrestling depends heavily on 'kayfabe,' where staged events are depicted as if they were real. The public record shows that this approach has also been skillfully wielded in matters of national security. In particular with regard to the ongoing debate surrounding strong encryption. This is something to keep in mind whenever you hear warnings about gear from Huawei. The Chinese government is merely following the leader.

”They’re at it again. High ranking members of the political establishment have warned that they won’t be able to protect us against terrorists, drug cartels, and child pornographers unless Silicon Valley creates backdoors for American security services. The tech industry has responded by assuming a defiant stance which outwardly appears to side with user privacy. Yet history informs that this Manichean soap opera is not always what it appears to be. Concealed behind the headlines is a choreographed wrestling match where executives and politicians confront each other across the table while secretly shaking hands underneath”

Submission + - Cut and Paster creator Larry Tesler dies (theverge.com)

Submitted by radaos
radaos writes: Larry Tesler, formerly of Xerox PARC, has died aged 74.

In 1973, at PARC, where early work on graphical user interfaces took place, he developed the cut, copy, and paste operations familiar to all computer users today.
When Steve jobs visited Xerox in 1979, Tesler was part of the demonstration team for the Xerox Star GUI. https://youtu.be/ferle2Uovks
Tesler later joined Apple.

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