An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Researchers at MIT have published a new paper that describes a new type of artificial brain synapse that offers performance improvements versus other existing versions, and which can be combined in volumes of tens of thousands on a chip that's smaller physically than a single piece of confetti. The results could help create devices that can handle complex AI computing locally, while remaining small and power-efficient, and without having to connect to a data center. The research team created what are known as "memristors" -- essentially simulated brain synapses created using silicon, but also using alloys of silver and copper in their construction. The result was a chip that could effectively "remember" and recall images in very high detail, repeatedly, with much crisper and more detailed "remembered" images than in other types of simulated brain circuits that have come before. What the team wants to ultimately do is recreate large, complex artificial neural networks that are currently based in software that require significant GPU computing power to run -- but as dedicated hardware, so that it can be localized in small devices, including potentially your phone, or a camera.

Unlike traditional transistors, which can switch between only two states (0 or 1) and which form the basis of modern computers, memsistors offer a gradient of values, much more like your brain, the original analog computer. They also can "remember" these states so they can easily recreate the same signal for the same received current multiple times over. What the researchers did here was borrow a concept from metallurgy: When metallurgists want to change the properties of a metal, they combine it with another that has that desired property, to create an alloy. Similarly, the researchers here found an element they could combine with the silver they use as the memristor's positive electrode, in order to make it better able to consistently and reliably transfer ions along even a very thin conduction channel. That's what enabled the team to create super small chips that contain tens of thousands of memristors that can nonetheless not only reliably recreate images from "memory," but also perform inference tasks like improving the detail of, or blurring the original image on command, better than other, previous memristors created by other scientists.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cox Communications is lowering Internet upload speeds in entire neighborhoods to stop what it considers "excessive usage," in a decision that punishes both heavy Internet users and their neighbors. Cox, a cable company with about 5.2 million broadband customers in the United States, has been sending notices to some heavy Internet users warning them to use less data and notifying them of neighborhood-wide speed decreases. In the case we will describe in this article, a gigabit customer who was paying $50 extra per month for unlimited data was flagged by Cox because he was using 8TB to 12TB a month. Cox responded by lowering the upload speeds on the gigabit-download plan from 35Mbps to 10Mbps for the customer's whole neighborhood. Cox confirmed to Ars that it has imposed neighborhood-wide slowdowns in multiple neighborhoods in cases like this one but didn't say how many excessive users are enough to trigger a speed decrease.

Space Force, the branch of the US armed services established by the Trump administration last December, now shares a name with a Netflix comedy starring Steve Carrell. From a report: The military reportedly isn't too concerned about possible confusion over the fictional show's name. Netflix, however, has reportedly secured trademark rights in Europe, Australia, Mexico and elsewhere for Space Force. Currently, the Air Force only owns a pending application for registration of the name Space Force in the US based on intent to use, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Records obtained by the publication showed that Netflix was submitting applications for the name "Space Force" internationally back in January 2019.

If our social platforms are going to be gatekeepers, then they need to acknowledge their role in the information ecosystems. It is knowing what to boost and what to ignore that makes a good platform, writes veteran technology journalist and now a venture capitalist Om Malik. From his essay: The battle of good email versus spam email has taken a long time, but it has been worth fighting. The struggle between real information and fake information is no different. Unfortunately, what we have is ambivalent algorithms on our social platforms that blindly amplify both hope and hate. This gets complicated pretty quickly. Without access to the same platforms currently being used to gaslight our country, we won't see the awful videos of police in conflict with the people they should protect. Without the same platforms, it would be harder to tell that the media just glorifies the titillating stuff, whether it is the opinion page of the old Gray Lady or the fake looting of a non-existent Rolex store.

I am the first to admit that this is one hard and messy problem. The challenge we face today is that technology's supreme commanders fail to fight the real monkey on their back -- how the modern internet works. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or Google, the core principle of these companies is engagement and growth. More engagement means more growth, and that means more attention and thus more money. If Facebook removed news from your feed and just restricted it to social items, like baby pictures, ravings of a crazy uncle, and event announcements, there is a good chance that engagement on the platform would decrease. Twitter would be a lot less engaging if it reverted back to its original premise of showing the latest, not the loudest. And what if Google stopped rewarding frequent visits as one of the measurements for showing the results on its search engine? I think you know.

Twitter is developing a new in-app system for requesting verification, according to a recent finding from reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, which Twitter has since confirmed. The discovery involves an added "Request Verification" option that appears in a redesigned account settings screen. This feature is not launched to the public, Twitter says. From a report: Wong typically digs into Twitter's and Facebook's to discover features like these, making a name for herself as someone who scoops upcoming additions and changes to popular social apps before they go live. In this case, she's stumbled upon one of Twitter's most-requested features after an edit button: a way to acquire the coveted blue checkmark typically reserved for public figures.

A new study on kids' app usage and habits indicates a major threat to YouTube's dominance, as kids now split their time between Google's online video platform and other apps, like TikTok, Netflix and mobile games like Roblox. From a report: Kids ages four to 15 now spend an average of 85 minutes per day watching YouTube videos, compared with 80 minutes per day spent on TikTok. The latter app also drove growth in kids' social app use by 100% in 2019 and 200% in 2020, the report found. The data in the annual report by digital safety app maker Qustodio was provided by 60,000 families with children ages four to 14 in the U.S., U.K. and Spain, so its data isn't representative of global trends. The research encompasses children's online habits from February 2019 to April 2020, takes into account the COVID-19 crisis and is specifically focused on four main categories of mobile applications: online video, social media, video games and education. YouTube, not surprisingly, remains one of the most-used apps among children, the study found. Kids are now watching twice as many videos per day as they did just four years ago.

In a scathing indictment of Facebook's content moderation strategy, a new study identifies the company's decision to outsource such work as a key reason its efforts are failing. From a report: The NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights released a report today that calls on Facebook to end the outsourcing practice and commit to bringing the work in-house so moderation receives the resources and attention it deserves. The report also calls for a massive increase in the number of moderators, as well as improved working conditions that include better physical and mental health care for moderators who are subjected to disturbing content throughout the workday.

The report comes as Facebook's reputation continues to degrade following years of controversy over its handling of disinformation, fake news, and other dangerous content on its platform. Such criticism has intensified in recent days, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg facing a backlash from employees over his failure to censure tweets by President Trump that appear to violate the platform's policies against inciting violence. While the problems facing Facebook's content moderation have been widely reported, the study's principal author, Paul Barrett, said he wanted to highlight the fact that while content moderation is fundamental to keeping the platform usable, the company has relegated the work to a secondary role by primarily employing underpaid contractors in remote locations.

Pressure from Facebook staff is continuing to mount on Mark Zuckerberg over his policies towards posts by Donald Trump, with moderators joining those criticizing their boss for his stance. From a report: The moderators penned an open letter to their colleagues in support of virtual walkouts that have broken out at the company, after Zuckerberg refused to take down posts by Trump that many believed breached the site's policies on incitement of violence. "We would walk out with you -- if Facebook would allow it," the moderators write. In their statement, all the company's currently employed moderators remained anonymous, highlighting the precarious nature of their employment, which is subcontracted out through third parties.

"As outsourced contractors, non-disclosure agreements deter us from speaking openly about what we do and witness for most of our waking hours. Safety and data protection are important, but so is a healthy debate about what happens at Facebook. We can't walk out, but we cannot stay silent ... Facebook can do better," the letter continues. "We need to express that Mr Zuckerberg's words about personal dismay caused by Trump's 'looting and shooting' rhetoric are not enough. The benefit of the doubt this politician is being given as a user, even with such a large platform, is unparalleled -- the attempt to retroactively place his words behind the context of other posts actually has had effect of putting it on an isolated pedestal. This may be the ultimate exhibit of white exceptionality and further legitimization of state brutality we have witnessed in the last weeks." Further reading: More Than 140 Zuckerberg-funded Scientists Call on Facebook To Rein in Trump.

Battery-powered bikes "have become a compelling alternative for commuters who are being discouraged from taking public transportation and Ubers," according to the New York Times' lead consumer tech writer. In March, sales of e-bikes jumped 85% from a year earlier, according to the NPD Group, a research firm. Amazon, Walmart and Specialized are sold out of most models. Even smaller brands like Ride1Up and VanMoof have waiting lists. That's a remarkable shift. For many years, e-bikes carried the stigma of being vehicles for lazy pedalers and seniors... "I was convinced that e-bikes would completely change cities all over the world in the next 10 years, but it seems like because of this crisis, suddenly it's all happening in the next three or four months," said Taco Carlier, the chief executive of VanMoof, which is based in Amsterdam.
The Times' writer notes that e-bikes are at least twice as heavy as a road bike, make an attractive target for burglar, and may need manufacturer assistance for major repairs. But he ultimately concludes that "Despite some misgivings, my experience with e-bikes made me realize the benefits are far greater than the downsides." Most important, e-bikes kept me out of my car. Whenever I had a reason to go outside — like making a trip to the grocery store or dropping off baked goods at a friend's — I preferred riding an e-bike. This will become increasingly important in the coming months. As businesses reopen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised commuters to drive in cars alone. An e-bike may become crucial for squeezing through nightmare traffic.
And the Times' reporter also claims another benefit for e-bikes: joy. "On an e-bike, I saw more of the outdoors than I normally would, while keeping a safe distance from people."

America's Air Force "is hoping to pit an autonomous drone equipped with an artificial intelligence-driven flight control system against a fighter jet with a human pilot in a little over a year," reports The Drive: [T]he general concept of a fully-autonomous unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) capable of air-to-air combat, as well as air-to-ground strikes, hold great potential to fundamentally change the character of aerial warfare... At its most basic, a UCAV would be able to perform many of the same functions as manned aircraft, but would be able to make key decisions faster and more accurately, taking into account much more information in a shorter period of time, without any concern about being distracted or confused by the general chaos of combat. They can also be networked into swarms that work cooperatively to maximize their combat effectiveness at any given time far beyond what a human-piloted formation could.
The head of Air Force's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center "implied that the scheduled faceoff was very much an aspirational goal," according to the article, "and that it wasn't clear if it would happen as planned."

They also remember when Elon Musk responded to a tweet suggesting there should be a competitor to the Air Force's F-35 program. "The competitor should be a drone fighter plane that's remote controlled by a human," Musk wrote, "but with its maneuvers augmented by autonomy. The F-35 would have no chance against it."

Last month Techcrunch reported that Mozilla had gone "full incubator" by holding a startup lab called Fix the Internet, followed by "a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early-stage companies..."

Fix the Internet had many key themes, including collaboration and decentralization (as well as user-controlled data and privacy-protecting social networks). That event "drew the interest of some 1,500 people in 520 projects, and 25 were chosen to receive the full package and stipend during the development of their minimum viable product (MVP). Below that, as far as pecuniary commitment goes, is the 'MVP Lab,' similar to the spring program but offering a total of $16,000 per team."

And one of those MVP Lab teams is Meething, a new video conferencing and collaboration platform from the innovation lab ERA. Meething "aims to be more secure than existing video conferencing tools and run on a decentralized database engine and leverage peer-to-peer networking" according to ZDNet.

In their video interview with CEO Mark Nadal, he outlined the following selling points:

• Browser based video conferencing gives customers better options for security as well as branding.
• Open source architecture is a win and the peer-to-peer networking is more efficient on compute costs.
• Meething doesn't require downloads or apps that increase the security attack surface.
  
  The total addressable market for video conferencing is large and can support multiple players.

Their press release quotes Mark Mayo, a former Chief Product Officer at Mozilla who served as Meething's mentor, arguing that video conferencing on the web "has long promised to enable a whole new world of online collaboration. Frankly, it hasn't delivered. It's been way too hard to build cool products with video and Meething aims to be the zero-barrier-to-entry platform that realizes this future. Soon, video conferencing won't suck!"

An anonymous reader quotes Reuters: Self-driving cars, long touted by developers as a way to eliminate road deaths, could likely only prevent a third of all U.S. road crashes, according to a study released on Thursday. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a research group financed by U.S. insurers, found the remaining crashes were caused by mistakes that self-driving systems are not equipped to handle any better than human drivers.

Partners for Automated Vehicle Education, a consortium of self-driving companies and researchers, said in a statement on Thursday the study wrongly assumed that automated cars could only prevent crashes caused by perception errors and incapacitation. Some 72% of crashes were avoidable, based on the study's calculations, if accidents caused by speeding and violation of traffic laws were included, the consortium said...

[N]ot all human mistakes can be eliminated by camera, radar and other sensor-based technology, according to the IIHS analysis of more than 5,000 representative police-reported crashes nationwide. Most crashes were due to more complex errors, such as making wrong assumptions about other road users' actions, driving too fast or too slow for road conditions, or making incorrect evasive maneuvers. Many crashes resulted from multiple mistakes. "Our goal was to show that if you don't deal with those issues, self-driving cars won't deliver massive safety benefits," said Jessica Cicchino, IIHS vice president for research and a coauthor of the study.

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: Racism is not getting worse. It's getting filmed," Will Smith said in 2016. And this week the Washington Post noted a parallel pattern emerging: videos of violent police encounters which "contrast sharply with accounts by the departments or their unions." The Post provides four examples of police officials providing "inaccurate or outright misleading descriptions of what has occurred... Taken together, the incidents show how instant verification of police accounts have altered the landscape of accountability."

The Post even spoke to the executive director of one of America's national police officer labor unions, who conceded their profession has been "diminished by events that have been witnessed on video over the course of the last couple of weeks."

Here's one of the Post's examples:

Evan Gorski, 21, a protester in Philadelphia, was arrested on an allegation he pushed an officer off a bike on Monday, authorities told his attorney. But video circulated on social media painted a much different picture of how Gorski, a Temple University student, tangled with police. In the moment captured by others, Gorski reached between another demonstrator and an officer to separate them.

A moment later, Philadelphia Police officer Joseph Bologna Jr. struck Gorski with a baton, chased him down and straddled him as another officer pressed his face on the asphalt. Other officers swung their batons at others gathered around. Gorski's attorney, R. Emmett Madden, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that prosecutors dropped charges and released him Wednesday after reviewing video from the scene. "The police were lying," Madden said. "We had a protest police brutality, and then police brutalize my client and try to frame him for a crime he didn't commit."
Officer Bologna is now facing charges of aggravated assault.

Meanwhile CNN report that in the last week at least 8 instances of police using excessive force. were caught on camera, while Vox argue that videos going viral "have been crucial in keeping the police accountable."

"A newly uncovered form of ransomware is going after Windows and Linux systems," reports ZDNet, "in what appears to be a targeted campaign." Named Tycoon after references in the code, this ransomware has been active since December 2019 and looks to be the work of cyber criminals who are highly selective in their targeting. The malware also uses an uncommon deployment technique that helps stay hidden on compromised networks. The main targets of Tycoon are organisations in the education and software industries.

Tycoon has been uncovered and detailed by researchers at BlackBerry working with security analysts at KPMG. It's an unusual form of ransomware because it's written in Java, deployed as a trojanised Java Runtime Environment and is compiled in a Java image file (Jimage) to hide the malicious intentions... [T]he first stage of Tycoon ransomware attacks is less uncommon, with the initial intrusion coming via insecure internet-facing Remote Desktop Protocol servers. This is a common attack vector for malware campaigns and it often exploits servers with weak or previously compromised passwords. Once inside the network, the attackers maintain persistence by using Image File Execution Options (IFEO) injection settings that more often provide developers with the ability to debug software. The attackers also use privileges to disable anti-malware software using ProcessHacker in order to stop removal of their attack...

After execution, the ransomware encrypts the network with files encrypted by Tycoon given extensions including .redrum, .grinch and .thanos — and the attackers demand a ransom in exchange for the decryption key. The attackers ask for payment in bitcoin and claim the price depends on how quickly the victim gets in touch via email.

The fact the campaign is still ongoing suggests that those behind it are finding success extorting payments from victims.

Reddit is vowing more changes after its co-founder Alexis Ohanian resigned and requested they replace him with a black candidate. First Reddit's other co-founder (and current CEO) Steve Huffman, calls it "a request that the board and I will honor."

But in a post on Reddit yesterday, CEO Huffman announced additional steps they'll take, reports Mashable: Huffman said the company will focus on the parts of Reddit that "reflect an unflattering but real resemblance to the world in the hate that black users and communities see daily." Huffman added that the company would provide more clarity to users and moderators on where its administrators stand when it comes to racism, offering moderators a seat at the table to help shape corporate policies...

["With more moderator engagement, the timeline is weeks, not months," Huffman wrote...]

Huffman left the thread open for Reddit users to ask him any questions on the matter. At the time of writing, it's amassed over 20,000 comments. In the Q&A, he maps out a few things Reddit's aiming to accomplish this year, including publicly sharing summaries of quarterly calls with moderators, expanding its number of [moderator] councils, regularly cycling members so it can bring on more moderators, and creating a council on social justice issues (that will also host all-council calls on how the company's policies are evolving).
On Monday Reddit was accused of "nurturing and monetizing" white supremacy by its own former interim CEO Ellen Pao -- who made that critique on Twitter.

Huffman's post responded that "The majority of our top communities have a rule banning hate and racism, which makes us proud, and is evidence why a community-led approach is the only way to scale moderation online. That said, this is not a rule communities should have to write for themselves and we need to rebalance the burden of enforcement."

An anonymous reader quotes The Register: IPv4 is here to stay with us for a good few years yet, reckons the the Réseaux IP Européens Network Coordination Centre's (RIPE NCC) public policy manager, eight years after IPv6 was supposed to replace it. Marco Hogewoning, public policy for the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based European regional internet registry, told The Register that despite the best efforts of IPv6 proponents over the last eight years, it might take "five to 10 years" before the world starts to truly abandon the IPv4 address space.

IPv6 was first defined in 1996, but with Friday marking the 8th anniversary of (the second) IPv6 "Launch" Day, RIPE NCC was keen to talk up the tech, whose chief benefit is that it provides a much greater pile of internet addresses for all the stuff humanity has dumped online in the last few decades...Musing that "little pockets of IPv4" and some government services hosted on IPv4 are two of the things holding the world back, Hogewoning told The Register:

"It's impossible for me to file my taxes over IPv6. As much as I want, I can't get rid of IPv4 in the end because I need to file my taxes. That's a dialogue we try to have with the governments... It's an important step to go to, enabling IPv6 [instead of] IPv4 to make sure we don't force people to have that backwards compatibility."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Mint's programmers, led by lead developer, Clement "Clem" Lefebvre, has dropped support for Ubuntu's Snap software packing system. [...] So, what's not to like? Well, a lot, thinks Clem. As he wrote in July 2019, the idea is fine: "When snap was announced it was supposed to be a solution, not a problem. It was supposed to make it possible to run newer apps on top of older libraries and to let third-party editors publish their software easily towards multiple distributions, just like Flatpak and AppImage." But, he said, "What we didn't want it to be was for Canonical to control the distribution of software between distributions and third-party editors, to prevent direct distribution from editors, to make it so software worked better in Ubuntu than anywhere else and to make its store a requirement."

Clem was worried then that Canonical was moving in that direction because: "Ubuntu is planning to replace the Chromium [Google's open-source browser and foundation for Chrome] repository package with an empty package, which installs the Chromium snap. In other words, as you install APT [Debian's program for installing and managing DEB files] updates, Snap becomes a requirement for you to continue to use Chromium and installs itself behind your back. This breaks one of the major worries many people had when Snap was announced and a promise from its developers that it would never replace APT. A self-installing Snap Store which overwrites part of our APT package base is a complete NO-NO. It's something we have to stop and it could mean the end of Chromium updates and access to the snap store in Linux Mint."

Fast forward to now, and that's still the case with Chromium, and Clem has had enough: "In the Ubuntu 20.04 package base, the Chromium package is indeed empty and acting, without your consent, as a backdoor by connecting your computer to the Ubuntu Store. Applications in this store cannot be patched, or pinned. You can't audit them, hold them, modify them, or even point snap to a different store. You've as much empowerment with this as if you were using proprietary software, i.e. none. This is in effect similar to a commercial proprietary solution, but with two major differences: It runs as root, and it installs itself without asking you."

People want to help each other, even when it costs them something, and even when the motivations to help don't always align, a new study suggests. Phys.Org reports: In research published today in the journal Science Advances, sociologists found that people overwhelmingly chose to be generous to others -- even to strangers, and even when it seems one motivation to help might crowd out another. It is the first study to examine how all the established motivations to be generous interact with one another.

The study involved more than 700 people, and was designed to help researchers understand prosocial behavior. For this study, which was done online, participants had to decide how much of a 10-point endowment to give to other people. The points had monetary value to the participants; giving cost them something. Then the researchers created different scenarios that combined one or all four of the potential motivators for giving. One: The recipient of a kindness is inclined to do something nice for the giver in return. Two: A person is motivated to do something nice to someone that she saw be generous to a third person. Three: A person is likely to do good in the presence of people in their network who might reward their generosity. And four: A person is likely to "pay it forward" to someone else if someone has done something nice for her.

[David Melamed, lead author of the study and an associate professor of sociology at The Ohio State University] said that prior to the experiment, he thought the motivations for kindness might crowd one another out. "People have a self-bias," he said. "If you do something nice for me, I may weigh that more than if I see you do something nice for someone else. But we found that all the motivators still show up as predictors of how much a person is willing to give to someone else, regardless of how the differing motivators are combined." This research helps us understand the remarkable quantity and diversity of prosocial behavior we see in humans, Melamed said. "From an evolutionary perspective, it's kind of perplexing that it even exists, because you're decreasing your own fitness on behalf of others," Melamed said. "And yet, we see it in bees and ants, and humans and throughout all of nature."

"It's the middle of 2020 and the USB-C standards are confusing even for the most technical person," writes Slashdot reader mprindle. Robert Triggs writes via Android Authority: USB-C is billed as the solution for all our future cable needs, unifying power, and data delivery with display and audio connectivity. Ushering in an age of the one-size-fits-all cable. Despite the USB-C connector supplied as default in modern smartphones, the standard has, unfortunately, failed to live up to its early promises. Even the seemingly most basic function of USB-C -- powering devices -- continues to be a mess of compatibility issues, conflicting proprietary standards, and a general lack of consumer information to guide purchasing decisions. The data speeds available over USB-C have also become increasingly convoluted. The problem is that the features supported by different USB-C devices aren't clear, yet the defining principle of the USB-C standard makes consumers think everything should just work... The article goes on to discuss the charging speed and data transfer speed disparities, USB-C port shortages, and compatibility issues with USB 2.0, 3.0, and 3.1 cables.

"Unfortunately, the USB-C ecosystem is more, not less convoluted in 2020 than it was when I first looked at this issue back in 2018," writes Robert Triggs in closing. "The announcement of USB 3.2 and USB 4 makes the standard more complex without giving the end-user clear information about what's supported. While the growth in USB Power Delivery support is a good sign, the introduction of PPS has already hampered any hopes that the industry might soon coalesce around a single charging standard. The USB spec changes every year, making it impossible for consumers to keep up. Years later, I still don't see a clear way out of this confusing mess."

shanen shares a report from Android Police: Late last year, Facebook announced a tool to let users easily migrate their uploaded photos to Google Photos. The tool was initially available in Ireland, with plans to expand to more countries in the first half of this year. The social network has made good on those plans by expanding the rollout to the US and Canada in April, and now reaching a global rollout today. [...]

It's a pretty straightforward process: from the general Facebook settings, select Your Facebook Information -> Transfer a Copy of Your Photos or Videos. From there, just follow the prompts. The tool came out of the joint Data Transfer Project by Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft -- a GDPR-compliant initiative to make personal data more mobile. In addition to downloading a copy or exporting it to Google Photos, users will eventually have more destination options for their photos, although Facebook hasn't said which. Slashdot reader shanen adds the following commentary: "Mixed emotions. It could actually be a good thing if it became part of a general trend of allowing us to control and thereby more effectively own our own data. But when has Facebook ever done a good thing?"