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Submission + - SPAM: Brave Browser Disables Google's FLoC Tracking System

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Brave, a Chromium-based browser, has removed FLoC, Google's controversial alternative identifier to third-party cookies for tracking users across websites. FLoC, or Federated Learning of Cohorts, has just been released by Google for Chrome as its answer to improving privacy while still delivering targeted ads. "The worst aspect of FLoC is that it materially harms user privacy, under the guise of being privacy-friendly," says Brave in a blogpost. FLoC has been been widely criticized by privacy advocates, even though it is an improvement to third-party cookies. The Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) calls it a "terrible idea" because now Chrome shares a summary of each user's recent browsing activity with marketers.

Brave, a privacy-focused browser headed up by Mozilla co-founder and key JavaScript designer, Brendan Eich, says it has removed FLoC from the Nightly version of Brave for the desktop and Android. Brave notes the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (CCPA) and Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as signs that consumers are demanding privacy on the web. "In the face of these trends, it is disappointing to see Google, instead of taking the present opportunity to help design and build a user-first, privacy-first Web, proposing and immediately shipping in Chrome a set of smaller, ad-tech-conserving changes, which explicitly prioritize maintaining the structure of the Web advertising ecosystem as Google sees it," Brave says in a blogpost. Brave argues that because the feature does impact user privacy, it should be something that users need to opt-in to.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Mammals Can Breathe Through Their Intestines (gizmodo.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: When pressed for oxygen, some fish and sea cucumbers will use their lower intestines to get a little extra out of their environment. Now, a team of Japanese researchers say that mammals are also capable of respirating through their rectal cavity, at least in a lab setting.

The team’s research is published today in the journal Med and describes the capacity for mice, rats, and pigs to survive longer and have more strength in low-oxygen circumstances when given oxygen gas or an oxygen-rich liquid through their rectums, in a process similar to an enema. While fish like loaches and catfish use a similar method to gain additional oxygen in the natural world, this doesn’t appear to be an evolutionary adaptation for mammals. In other words, mammalian bodies can’t naturally do this, but with a little push from modern science, it becomes possible. Previous research has seen oxygen injected directly into mammalian bloodstreams, prolonging the lives of rabbits, but the rectal approach to the low-oxygen problem is novel.

The experiment, while disturbing, was designed to find new ways to save the lives of people whose lungs are failing. These treatments prolonged the animals’ survival in a low-oxygen setting by staving off respiratory failure. Mice were given both the gas and liquid oxygen delivery methods, while the rats and pigs only received the liquid treatment.

In a lab-controlled hypoxic setting (a chamber that was 9.5% oxygenated), mice without the supplemental oxygenation died after about 11 minutes. With the treatment, three-quarters of the tested mice survived for nearly an hour in the same lethal conditions.

From Pigs And Rodents Can Breathe Through Their Butts, And This Could Be a Vital Discovery:

Initially, their research subjects were mice, who were thankfully anesthetized for the next part. The researchers developed an oxygen ventilation system to be inserted anally; they induced hypoxia via tracheal intubation, and compared mice ventilated intestinally to control mice who received no ventilation.

Of the control mice, not a single one survived longer than 11 minutes. This was in marked contrast to the mice receiving intestinal oxygen, 75 percent of which survived for 50 minutes.

Submission + - DarkSide Ransomware Gang Quits After Servers, Bitcoin Stash Seized (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by BeerFartMoron
BeerFartMoron writes: The DarkSide ransomware affiliate program responsible for the six-day outage at Colonial Pipeline this week that led to fuel shortages and price spikes across the country is running for the hills. The crime gang announced it was closing up shop after its servers were seized and someone drained the cryptocurrency from an account the group uses to pay affiliates.

“Servers were seized (country not named), money of advertisers and founders was transferred to an unknown account,” reads a message from a cybercrime forum reposted to the Russian OSINT Telegram channel.

“A few hours ago, we lost access to the public part of our infrastructure,” the message continues, explaining the outage affected its victim shaming blog where stolen data is published from victims who refuse to pay a ransom. The outage also took down its payment server and those that supply its distributed denial-of-service feature, which is used to turn up the heat on victims who balk at paying.

“Also, a few hours after the withdrawal, funds from the payment server (ours and clients’) were withdrawn to an unknown address,” the DarkSide admin says.

DarkSide organizers also said they were releasing decryption tools for all of the companies that have been ransomed but which haven’t yet paid.

“After that, you will be free to communicate with them wherever you want in any way you want,” the instructions read.
Virtualization

Journal Journal: Self defense? 22

Journal by fustakrakich

When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even deceit, treachery, violence, usury, prison, and death. Because order serves the good of the community, the individual must be sacrificed for the common good. -- Dietrich von Nieheim, Bishop of Verden, 1411.

As the saying goes, *We're all bozos on this bus*

Comment Worthless without GPU upgrade (Score 1) 75

by iamhassi (#61384180) Attached to: Framework's Repairable Laptop Is Up For Preorder
This laptop is missing the only reason to buy a upgradeable laptop: ability to upgrade the gpu. https://frame.work/products/la... there is no option for gpu choices, you get Intel onboard gpu and that’s it. I can buy a 10 year old i7 MacBook Pro https://everymac.com/systems/a... and throw windows 10 on it and it’ll keep up with everything a 2021 laptop can do except for games, a modern rtx 3070 gpu would blow away the 2011 Radeon 6570m in that MacBook like a Ferrari racing a ant. https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/... so without the ability to upgrade the gpu you’re probably better off just buying a good laptop with dedicated gpu for about the same price

Submission + - SPAM: Pentagon Surveilling Americans Without a Warrant, Senator Reveals

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Pentagon is carrying out warrantless surveillance of Americans, according to a new letter written by Senator Ron Wyden and obtained by Motherboard. Senator Wyden's office asked the Department of Defense (DoD), which includes various military and intelligence agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), for detailed information about its data purchasing practices after Motherboard revealed special forces were buying location data. The responses also touched on military or intelligence use of internet browsing and other types of data, and prompted Wyden to demand more answers specifically about warrantless spying on American citizens.

Some of the answers the DoD provided were given in a form that means Wyden's office cannot legally publish specifics on the surveillance; one answer in particular was classified. In the letter Wyden is pushing the DoD to release the information to the public. A Wyden aide told Motherboard that the Senator is unable to make the information public at this time, but believes it would meaningfully inform the debate around how the DoD is interpreting the law and its purchases of data. "I write to urge you to release to the public information about the Department of Defense's (DoD) warrantless surveillance of Americans," the letter, addressed to Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, reads.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: If you prefer city living over nature, you might be a psychopath

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: City slickers are more likely to be psychotic — or so says a study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, which found a correlation between people who exhibit darker personality traits and a preference for urban over suburban and rural areas.

Using the crowdsourcing website Prolific, researchers at the University of Derby surveyed 304 UK-based adults on their preferred geographical setting, how connected they felt with nature and their personality type. The resulting data showed a correlation between socially averse personality traits — like sadism and narcissism — and being partial to inner-city living. A second study of another 235 UK-based adults concluded similar results.

“Psychopathy is inversely associated with nature connectedness,” authors wrote in the study’s highlight section, noting that “high scoring on psychopathy was associated with a preference for inner-city living, but did not match residential history.”

Their findings are possibly reflective of big-city residents failing to get the quality of life improvements that nature brings to less urban dwellers.

Researchers are still unsure, however, if nature is the chicken or the egg: Do city dwellers become more psychotic because of their lack of a connection to nature, or does the lack of nature make urbanites more prone to becoming psychopaths?
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Study finds alarming levels of 'forever chemicals' in US mothers' breast milk 2

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: A new study that checked American women’s breast milk for PFAS contamination detected the toxic chemical in all 50 samples tested, and at levels nearly 2,000 times higher than the level some public health advocates advise is safe for drinking water.

PFAS, or per and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 9,000 compounds that are used to make products like food packaging, clothing and carpeting water and stain resistant. They are called “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and have been found to accumulate in humans.

They are linked to cancer, birth defects, liver disease, thyroid disease, plummeting sperm counts and a range of other serious health problems.

The peer-reviewed study, published on Thursday in the Environmental Science and Technology journal, found PFAS at levels in milk ranging from 50 parts per trillion (ppt) to more than 1,850ppt.

Though researchers are concerned by the findings, newborns are difficult to study so there has not been a thorough analysis of how PFAS affect them, said Sheela Sathyanarayana, a co-author of the study and pediatrician with the University of Washington.

But she added that studies of older children and adults have linked the chemicals to hormonal disruptions and suggests PFAS harm the immune system, which could be especially problematic for infants because breast milk bolsters their immune system.
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:The whole thing was silly anyway. (Score 1, Insightful) 86

Having their own fab and their entirely independent in-house server manufacturing would be financable with the small change left over in after emptying truckbeds full of big money they spend on war machines that the generals themselves don't even want.

It could he so custom that the Chinese couldn't even inject bugs if they wanted to.

Would it? Govt often screws up everything. I believe a outside contractor that knows what they’re doing would be better and cheaper than govt trying to hire and manage people to setup cloud computing big enough to handle the entire military.

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