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Submission + - Huawei Suspected of Proaching Diamond Coating Glass Technology, Or Not (bloomberg.com) 1

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: According to a Bloomberg BusinessWeek story, Akhan Semiconductor Inc., alleged that Huawei was suspected to steal its "nearly indestructible" smartphone screen technology. Huawei approached Khan for a license to use the diamond-coated glass technology. A sample was sent to Huawei San Diego office after a letter of intent [and not a contract], signed by both parties, Huawei "promised" to return any samples within 60 days and also to limit any tests it might perform to methods that wouldn’t cause damage. Khan also claimed that the technology was subjected to U.S. export laws, though Huawei representative disputed such classification and it is unclear how the technology, if restricted, can be licensed to consumer smartphones. Eventually, Huawei returned the shattered sample past the due dates, with a Huawei engineer said that standard tests (of the glass' strength) were performed on the sample in China. Alerting to U.S. authority, the FBI, Khan, and a reporter from BusinessWeek conducted a bugged sting on two Huawei representatives. At one point, Lo startled Khan and Shurboff by wondering aloud if the U.S. government was monitoring their meeting. No charge was filed against Huawei even though the FBI raided Huawei’s San Diego facility on Jan. 28, the same day it charged the company of stealing T-Mobile's Tappy technology, a publicly known testing robot sold commercially by EPSON with a new rubber fingertip attached by T-mobile. Huawei, and skeptics have pointed out that the T-Mobile allegation has since been settled in civil court in which the jury ruled that Huawei violated contract but no willful or malicious conduct on the trade secret claim. “If Tappy is as far as they’ve gotten (on intellectual property) theft, that seems to be pretty thin gruel for waging a large campaign against Huawei,” Council on Foreign Relations cybersecurity expert Adam Segal told the Associated Press. Both Huawei or FBI declined to comment on the Khan allegation. [Lack of charge] raises a question about the broader U.S. crackdown on Huawei: Is it based on hard evidence of wrongdoing or driven by a desperation to catch the Chinese company doing something—anything—bad?

Submission + - One Of Leonardo Da Vinci's Notebooks Can Now Be Viewed Online (www.bl.uk)

Submitted by dryriver
dryriver writes: The British library has made one of Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks viewable on its website. The 25 page notebook documents some of Da Vinci's work on weights and balances, the physics of concave mirrors, the physics of light reflecting from the moon, and more. Each page is annotated on the website. The entry for Da Vinci's work on concave mirrors reads: "Here Leonardo is again dealing with the heat-producing potential of mirrors. Some of these studies may be linked to later work carried out by Leonardo during his stay in the Vatican, in 1515, when he was developing a plan to employ solar energy for industrial purposes. His attempts to perfect a burning mirror then led him to claim that 'with this any dyer's cauldron can be made to boil; and by it a pool will be heated, because there will always be boiling water'."

Submission + - Nest Secure Has An Unlisted, Disabled Microphone (androidauthority.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Owners of the Nest Secure alarm system have been able to use voice commands to control their home security through Google Assistant for a while now. However, to issue those commands, they needed a separate Google Assistant-powered device, like a smartphone or a Google Home smart speaker. The reason for this limitation has always seemed straightforward: according to the official tech specs, there’s no onboard microphone in the Nest Secure system. However, Google just informed us that it is right now rolling out Assistant functionality to all Nest Secure devices via a software update. That’s right: if you currently own a Nest Secure, you will be able to use it as a Google Home very soon. That means somewhere in the Nest Guard — the keypad base station of the Nest Secure — there might be a microphone we didn’t know existed. Either that or your voice commands are going to be heard by another product (like your phone, maybe) but Assistant’s output will now come from the Nest Guard, if you happen to be in the range of that device.
Medicine

Method For Fooling Cancer Cells Into Fat Cells Can Stop Cancer's Spread (technologynetworks.com) 83

Posted by BeauHD from the promising-findings dept.
Researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland have discovered that they can prevent the formation of metastases by fooling breast cancer cells into fat cells. The proof-of-concept study was published in the journal Cancer Cell. Technology Networks reports: Malignant cells can rapidly respond and adapt to changing microenvironmental conditions, by reactivating a cellular process called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), enabling them to alter their molecular properties and transdifferentiate into a different type of cell (cellular plasticity). Cancer cells can exploit EMT -- a process that is usually associated with the development of organs during embryogenesis -- in order to migrate away from the primary tumor and form secondary metastases. Cellular plasticity is linked to cancer survival, invasion, tumor heterogeneity and resistance to both chemo and targeted therapies. In addition, EMT and the inverse process termed mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) both play a role in a cancer cell's ability to metastasize.

Using mouse models of both murine and human breast cancer the team investigated whether they could therapeutically target cancer cells during the process of EMT -- whilst the cells are in a highly plastic state. When the mice were administered Rosiglitazone in combination with MEK inhibitors it provoked the transformation of the cancer cells into post-mitotic and functional adipocytes (fat cells). In addition, primary tumor growth was suppressed and metastasis was prevented. Since both drugs used in the preclinical study were FDA-approved the team are hopeful that it may be possible to translate this therapeutic approach to the clinic.

Submission + - Senators To Investigate Carriers Selling Location Data To Bounty Hunters (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: On Tuesday, Motherboard revealed that major American telcos T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint are selling customer location data of users in an unregulated market that trickles down to bounty hunters and people not authorized to handle such information. In our investigation, we purchased the real-time location of a cell phone from a bail industry source for $300, pinpointing it to a specific part of Queens, New York. The issue potentially impacts hundreds of millions of cell phone users in the United States, with customers likely unaware that their location data is being sold and resold through multiple companies, with even the telcos sometimes having little idea where it ends up and how it is used.

Now, Senators and a commissioner for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have urged government bodies to investigate, with some calling for regulation that would ensure customers are properly made aware of how their data is being sold. “The American people have an absolute right to the privacy of their data, which is why I’m extraordinarily troubled by reports of this system of repackaging and reselling location data to unregulated third party services for potentially nefarious purposes. If true, this practice represents a legitimate threat to our personal and national security,” Senator Kamala Harris told Motherboard in a statement. Harris explicitly called on the FCC to investigate the issue. “The FCC needs to immediately investigate these serious security concerns and take the necessary steps to protect the privacy of American consumers,” she said.

Submission + - So You Automated Your Coworkers Out of a Job (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by merbs
merbs writes: Automation is too often presented as a faceless, monolithic phenomenon—but it’s a human finger that ultimately pulls the trigger. Someone has to initiate the process that automates a task or mechanizes a production line. To write or procure the program that makes a department or a job redundant. And that’s not always an executive, or upper-, or even middle management—in fact, it’s very often not. Sometimes it’s a junior employee, or a developer, even an intern.

In a series of interviews with coders, technicians, and engineers who’ve automated their colleagues out of work—or, in one case, been put in a position where they’d have to do so and decided to quit instead—I’ve attempted to produce a snapshot of life on the messy front lines of modern automation. (Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the automators.) We’ve heard plenty of forecasting about the many jobs slated to be erased, and we’ve seen the impacts on the communities that have lost livelihoods at the hands of automation, but we haven’t had many close up looks at how all this unfolds in the office or the factory floor.

Comment Re:I for one welcome... (Score 3, Informative) 221

This is normal and common in the United States - often part of the building code for facilities of a certain size. So technically, it is illegal in my city for a company to NOT do it.

In many facilities, particularly large warehouses and tall office buildings, calling 911 will tell the operator the geo-coordinates of the facility, but not the floor or where in a facility the actual problem is. So, for example, in my company (HQ in a 30 story building), we have well known and well publicized alternate emergency numbers and processes that uses our internal phone system's logic to determine, down to the room, where the building emergency number was dialed. Trained first responders that are employees of the company have full and complete access to all locations in the facility and can rapidly escort external fire, police and EMT responders to the appropriate location.

Same process for all of our warehouses and smaller facilities. You have the option of dialing 911 on your cell phone, but we all know it will be more efficient to use the internal system because of the logistics involved in getting responders where they need to be.

Submission + - Prank Calls Brought ICE Hotline To a Standstill, Internal Emails Show (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: When ICE launched an immigration crime hotline last year, the Trump administration pitched it as a way to provide resources to victims, but activists saw something else: an attack on the immigrant community. The hotline was part of the Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office, an outfit established in February 2017. When the office first launched a line for its services the following April, protestors flooded the hotline to call in pranks and slow down response times. The plan picked up even more steam as the protestors shared the hotline number online, encouraging others to call in with fake tips.

According to internal emails and documents obtained by The Verge under the Freedom of Information Act, prank calls fully upended the system, leaving operators unable to answer more than 98 percent of incoming calls during the protest as the media relations team attempted to contain the narrative. In reports and emails produced in the first days of operation, ICE officials described an “overwhelming” amount of calls. The day after the launch, the office received more than 16,400. Of those, only a little more than 2,100 were placed into a queue, and only 260 answered. Callers in the queue waited as long as 79 minutes to reach an operator. An official noted that, should the rate of calls continue, they would need an additional 400 operators to field the hotline.

Submission + - SIM Card Forces All of Your Mobile Data Through Tor (vice.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: [O]ne UK grassroots internet service provider is currently testing a data only SIM card that blocks any non-Tor traffic from leaving the phone at all, potentially providing a more robust way to use Tor while on the go. “This is about sticking a middle finger up to mobile filtering, mass surveillance,” Gareth Llewelyn, founder of Brass Horn Communications, told Motherboard in an online chat. Brass Horn is a non-profit internet service provider with a focus on privacy and anti-surveillance services. Tor is a piece of software and a related network run by volunteers. When someone runs Tor on their computer or phone, it routes their traffic through multiple servers before reaching its final destination, such as a website. That way, the website owner can’t tell who is visiting; only that someone is connecting from Tor. The most common way people access Tor is with the Tor Browser Bundle on desktop, or with the Orbot app on Android.

But, in some cases, neither of these totally guarantee that all of your device’s traffic will be routed through Tor. If you’re using the Tor Browser Bundle on a laptop, and then go to use another piece of software, that app is probably not going to use Tor. The same might stand for Orbot running on older iterations of Android. Nathan Freitas, from The Guardian Project which maintains Orbot, said with newer versions of Android, you can lock down device traffic to only work if a specific VPN is activated, including Orbot’s. This SIM card, however, is supposed to provide a more restricted solution in the event that other approaches don’t quite work.

Submission + - AWS CEO Jassy Follows Apple In Calling For Retraction of Chinese Spy Chip Story (cnbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, followed Apple's lead in calling the for the retraction of Bloomberg's story about spy chips being embedded in servers. "They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories," Jassy wrote in a tweet on Monday. "Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract."

Apple CEO Tim Cook told Buzzfeed on Friday that the scenario Bloomberg reported never happened and that the October story in Bloomberg Businessweek should be retracted. Bloomberg alleged data center hardware used by Apple and AWS, and provided by server company Super Micro, was under surveillance by the Chinese government, even though almost all the companies named in the report denied Bloomberg's claim. Bloomberg published a denial from AWS alongside its own report, and AWS refuted the report in a more strongly worded six-paragraph blog post entitled "Setting the Record Straight on Bloomberg Businessweek's Erroneous Article."

Submission + - Last new nuclear reactors in US facing opposition (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by Muckluck
Muckluck writes: Ars Technica reports: Major owners of the new construction are set to hold a "go / no go" vote. This essentially is a deciding vote by stakeholders on whether the project should continue or be scrapped. 20 Georgia lawmakers are asking project leaders to cap costs putting additional pressure on this stakeholder vote.

New technology is expensive in this arena and it is a long term bet for stakeholders. If they pull it off, it will be set to provide base load capacity for the region for over 40 years. In these projects, the stakeholders pay for this power (both plant and fuel) in "today dollars" with the expectation that over time, they will recoup that cost for both the stakeholders and the rate payer. Abandoning the project represents a huge sunk cost with no hopes of recovery of the costs.

What do you think?

Submission + - An Imminent New Yorker Article Prompted Linus Torvalds to Step Back (newyorker.com)

Submitted by Etcetera
Etcetera writes: As expected, there was more to the story behind Linus' announcement on taking a step back from the maintainer role (for now). The associated change of the "Code of Conflict" to a "Code of Conduct" from the Contributor Covenant that is aligned with the goals of the Post-Meritocracy Manifesto was not just recent fallout from the problems with scheduling the Maintainer's Summit; a news was story about to drop by a reporter who'd been pursuing the culture beat for a while.

Torvalds’s decision to step aside came after The New Yorker asked him a series of questions about his conduct for a story on complaints about his abusive behavior discouraging women from working as Linux-kernel programmers. In a response to The New Yorker, Torvalds said, “I am very proud of the Linux code that I invented and the impact it has had on the world. I am not, however, always proud of my inability to communicate well with others—this is a lifelong struggle for me. To anyone whose feelings I have hurt, I am deeply sorry.”

Submission + - Humans Simply 'Hardwired' For Laziness (studyfinds.org) 1

Submitted by Zorro
Zorro writes: You’ve come home from work, you were planning on going to the gym, but you made the ultimate blunder: getting comfortable on the couch. You might say otherwise, but we all know that workout is now doomed. How is it that relaxing is simply so much more powerful than keeping our bodies in shape? A new study shows we may just have to chalk it up to our brains simply being hardwired to prefer hanging on the couch instead of the chin-up bar.

Submission + - John Hancock Will Include Fitness Tracking In All Life Insurance Policies (venturebeat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: John Hancock, one of the oldest and largest North American life insurers, will stop underwriting traditional life insurance and instead sell only interactive policies that track fitness and health data through wearable devices and smartphones, the company said on Wednesday. The move by the 156-year-old insurer, owned by Canada’s Manulife Financial, marks a major shift for the company, which unveiled its first interactive life insurance policy in 2015. It is now applying the model across all of its life coverage. Policyholders score premium discounts for hitting exercise targets tracked on wearable devices such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch and get gift cards for retail stores and other perks by logging their workouts and healthy food purchases in an app. In theory, everybody wins, as policyholders are incentivized to adopt healthy habits and insurance companies collect more premiums and pay less in claims if customers live longer.

Submission + - Despite Data Caps and Throttling, Industry Says Mobile Can Replace Home Internet (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: AT&T and Verizon are trying to convince the Federal Communications Commission that mobile broadband is good enough for Internet users who don't have access to fiber or cable services. The carriers made this claim despite the data usage and speed limitations of mobile services. In the mobile market, even "unlimited" plans can be throttled to unusable speeds after a customer uses just 25GB or so a month. Mobile carriers impose even stricter limits on phone hotspots, making it difficult to use mobile services across multiple devices in the home. The carriers ignored those limits in filings they submitted for the FCC's annual review of broadband deployment.

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