Following a 2018 study demonstrating how disrupted sleep can accelerate the buildup of toxic plaques associated with the disease, scientists from Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) in St. Louis have now identified a protein implicated in the progression of the disease that appears highly regulated by the circadian rhythm, helping them join the dots and providing a potential new therapeutic target. New Atlas reports: In their previous research, the WUSM team set out to explore how disruptions to our natural sleep cycles, or circadian rhythm, may accelerate the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain, which are strongly linked to Alzheimer's disease. Through studies on humans and in mice, the team was able to show a strong correlation between the two, and now through follow up work, the team has identified a brain protein that appears to play a role in this relationship. The brain protein in question is called YKL-40 and for years has served as a biomarker for Alzheimer's, as high levels of it have been found in the cerebrospinal fluid of those suffering from the disease and these levels rise as the disease progresses. The researchers were screening for genes that are regulated by the circadian rhythm, and were intrigued to see the gene for this brain protein pop up.

From there, the team investigated this connection between YKL-40 and Alzheimer's, which is characterized by chronic inflammation, by exploring how much of the protein is made under inflammatory conditions both with and without a key circadian gene. Indeed, this demonstrated that the circadian rhythm controls how much YKL-40 is produced. Next up, the team worked with mice prone to developing amyloid plaques, and genetically modified one group of them to be lacking the gene for YKL-40. As the mice reached old age, the team analyzed their brains and found that those without the YKL-40 protein exhibited around half the amyloid plaques of the control group.

Digging deeper into the reasons why, the team found that the mice lacking the YKL-40 gene featured more microglia, which are immune cells that surround amyloid plaques and prevent them from spreading. Essentially, this meant that those mice had more hungry immune cells prepared to gobble up the amyloid. [...] The team also examined this idea in human subjects, drawing on genetic data on 778 subjects from aging and dementia studies and finding only a quarter of them featured a genetic variant that lowers levels of YKL-40, and that cognitive function declined 16 percent more slowly in that group. The research was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

"It's taken over 50 years, but the solution to the Zodiac Killer's cipher has been found," writes Slashdot reader quonset. CNN reports: Dubbed the "340 cipher," the message was unraveled by a trio of code breakers -- David Oranchak, a software developer in Virginia, Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian computer programmer, and Sam Blake, an Australian mathematician. The Zodiac Killer is most known for leaving a trail of five unsolved murders between 1968 and 1969. He was never caught, but he gained notoriety by writing letters to police and local media up until 1974, sometimes in code, boasting of the killings. Bloody bits of clothing were included with his letters as proof of his actions. He claims he killed as many as 37 people.

Oranchak detailed the process for cracking the cipher on his website and in a YouTube video, where he used a specifically developed decryption software and a bit of luck to finally make the connection. The team used a unique program to sift through 650,000 variations of the message. In one, a couple of words appeared. "We got really lucky and found one that had part of the answer, but it wasn't obvious," Oranchak said, explaining that they then had to handpick their way through to decipher the rest of the message. The only disappointing part, Oranchak said, is that the missive contained no personally identifying information. Oranchak holds out no hope for solving the two remaining ciphers. He described the mission as "almost hopeless," as both are very short, with thousands of different names and phrases that could fit.

Apple has started building its own cellular modem for future devices, a move that would replace components from Qualcomm, Apple's top chip executive told staff on Thursday. From a report: Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technologies, made the disclosure in a town hall meeting with Apple employees, according to people familiar with the comments. "This year, we kicked off the development of our first internal cellular modem which will enable another key strategic transition," he said. "Long-term strategic investments like these are a critical part of enabling our products and making sure we have a rich pipeline of innovative technologies for our future." A cellular modem is one of the most important parts of a smartphone, enabling phone calls and connection to the internet via cellular networks. Srouji said the $1 billion acquisition of Intel's modem business in 2019 helped Apple build a team of hardware and software engineers to develop its own cellular modem.

An anonymous reader shares a report: More than one billion people in India today have a mobile connection, thanks in part to the proliferation of low-cost Android smartphones and the world's cheapest mobile data plans in recent years. This scale was unimaginable just three decades ago, when India had fewer than 2.5 million telephones in the country. One of the earliest and most pivotal efforts that expanded the reach of telephones in the country took place in the late 1980s. That was when the Indian government backed the idea of setting up telephone booths, or public call offices, across cities and towns. No longer did people need to buy expensive telephones, or pay exorbitant fees and bills. A person could just walk to a nearby mom and pop store, place a call for a couple of cents and move on.

On Wednesday, India's cabinet approved a proposal that seeks to replicate the decades-old strategy -- and its success -- with democratizing Wi-Fi in the world's second-largest internet market. India's IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the government will launch PM WANI (Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface) to "unleash a massive network in the country." The neighborhood stores that served as public call offices could now be public data offices, he said. To make the program a success, the government will not charge any license or registration fee, he said.

This week the Microsoft-owned code repository site GitHub released its annual report with statistics about its community, writes programming columnist Mike Melanson: The report offers a deep dive into three specific areas, with a look at developer productivity in the time of COVID, community and collaboration, and open source security. Highlights include increased productivity with 35% more repositories created in 2020 than 2019, a large open source community with more than 56M developers in 2020 with 100M expected by 2025, and security vulnerabilities that often go undetected for more than 4 years before being disclosed and 94% of projects relying on open source components.
"2020 has been a year of extraordinary change," notes GitHub's report. "Yet with 60M+ new repositories created this past year, one thing has remained true — developers came together from all corners of the world to innovate, find connection, and solve problems."

GitHub reports that over 1.9 billion contributions were added in the last year, with users distributed around the globe:

North America:	34%
Asia:	30.7%
Europe:	26.8%
South America:	4.9%
Africa:	2%
Oceania:	1.7%

And while JavaScript is still the most popular language used on the site, Python remains more popular (at #2) than Java (at #3) for the second year in a row.

1. JavaScript
2. Python
3. Java
4. TypeScript
5. C#
6. PHP
7. C++
8. C
9. Shell
10. Ruby

Chrome OS 87 starting rolling out on Thursday, adding the ability to search tabs, view the battery levels of your Bluetooth devices, and more. 9to5Google reports: Tab Groups help people better manage (and collapse/hide) tabs, but it doesn't always reduce the number open. Google is now introducing Tab Search to let users find what pages they have open across all windows. Tapping the circular dropdown button in the top-right corner -- also accessible with Ctrl+Shift+A -- first shows a list of everything open. It includes the favicon, page name, and domain, as well as an individual close button. This feature is first rolling out to Chromebooks before coming to desktop browsers.

Chrome OS 87 will list the Bluetooth battery levels of accessories in Settings and Quick Settings. Just navigate to the Bluetooth menu. This feature is primarily meant for wireless headphones and will show a notification with the current level in the bottom-right corner of your screen upon connection. Chrome OS 87 also adds 36 new backgrounds created by four different artists. To set, right-click on the desktop or shelf and select "Set wallpaper."

Other features in this release include:
- Saving to Google Drive has been updated with the ability to rename the file and selecting what folder to store it in
- Chrome OS devices now support switch accessibility devices
- Google has updated language settings to be easier for multilingual users to navigate
- The Alt+Tab window switcher now supports mouse, touch screen, and stylus input
- Version 87 makes visual improvements when renaming Virtual Desks and Launcher folders

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Google violated US labor laws by spying on workers who were organizing employee protests, then firing two of them, according to a complaint to be filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today. The complaint names two employees, Laurence Berland and Kathryn Spiers, both of whom were fired by the company in late 2019 in connection with employee activism. Berland was organizing against Google's decision to work with IRI Consultants, a firm widely known for its anti-union efforts, when he was let go for reviewing other employees' calendars. Now, the NLRB has found Google's policy against employees looking at certain coworkers' calendars is unlawful. "Google's hiring of IRI is an unambiguous declaration that management will no longer tolerate worker organizing," Berland said in a statement. "Management and their union busting cronies wanted to send that message, and the NLRB is now sending their own message: worker organizing is protected by law."

Spiers was fired after she created a pop-up for Google employees visiting the IRI Consultants website. "Googlers have the right to participate in protected concerted activities," the notification read, according to The Guardian. The company said Spiers had violated security policies, a statement that hurt her reputation in the tech community. Now, the NLRB has found the firing was unlawful. "This week the NLRB issued a complaint on my behalf. They found that I was illegally terminated for trying to help my colleagues," Spiers said. "Colleagues and strangers believe I abused my role because of lies told by Google management while they were retaliating against me. The NLRB can order Google to reinstate me, but it cannot reverse the harm done to my credibility."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google was sued last week for allegedly stealing Android users' cellular data allowances through unapproved, undisclosed transmissions to the web giant's servers. The lawsuit, Taylor et al v. Google, was filed in a US federal district court in San Jose on behalf of four plaintiffs based in Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin in the hope the case will be certified by a judge as a class action. The complaint contends that Google is using Android users' limited cellular data allowances without permission to transmit information about those individuals that's unrelated to their use of Google services. Data sent over Wi-Fi is not at issue, nor is data sent over a cellular connection in the absence of Wi-Fi when an Android user has chosen to use a network-connected application. What concerns the plaintiffs is data sent to Google's servers that isn't the result of deliberate interaction with a mobile device -- we're talking passive or background data transfers via cell network, here. "Google designed and implemented its Android operating system and apps to extract and transmit large volumes of information between Plaintiffs' cellular devices and Google using Plaintiffs' cellular data allowances," the complaint claims. "Google's misappropriation of Plaintiffs' cellular data allowances through passive transfers occurs in the background, does not result from Plaintiffs' direct engagement with Google's apps and properties on their devices, and happens without Plaintiffs' consent." The allegation: "The device, stationary, with all apps closed, transferred data to Google about 16 times an hour, or about 389 times in 24 hours. Assuming even half of that data is outgoing, Google would receive about 4.4MB per day or 130MB per month in this manner per device subject to the same test conditions."

A Slashdot reader shared this report from the Register: Google on Thursday was sued for allegedly stealing Android users' cellular data allowances though unapproved, undisclosed transmissions to the web giant's servers...

The complaint contends that Google is using Android users' limited cellular data allowances without permission to transmit information about those individuals that's unrelated to their use of Google services... What concerns the plaintiffs is data sent to Google's servers that isn't the result of deliberate interaction with a mobile device — we're talking passive or background data transfers via cell network, here. "Google designed and implemented its Android operating system and apps to extract and transmit large volumes of information between Plaintiffs' cellular devices and Google using Plaintiffs' cellular data allowances," the complaint claims...

Android users have to accept four agreements to participate in the Google ecosystem: Terms of Service; the Privacy Policy; the Managed Google Play Agreement; and the Google Play Terms of Service. None of these, the court filing contends, disclose that Google spends users' cellular data allowances for these background transfers. To support the allegations, the plaintiff's counsel tested a new Samsung Galaxy S7 phone running Android, with a signed-in Google Account and default setting, and found that when left idle, without a Wi-Fi connection, the phone "sent and received 8.88 MB/day of data, with 94 per cent of those communications occurring between Google and the device." The device, stationary, with all apps closed, transferred data to Google about 16 times an hour, or about 389 times in 24 hours. Assuming even half of that data is outgoing, Google would receive about 4.4MB per day or 130MB per month in this manner per device subject to the same test conditions...

An iPhone with Apple's Safari browser open in the background transmits only about a tenth of that amount to Apple, according to the complaint... Vanderbilt University Professor Douglas C. Schmidt performed a similar study in 2018 — except that the Chrome browser was open — and found that Android devices made 900 passive transfers in 24 hours...

The complaint charges that Google conducts these undisclosed data transfers for further its advertising business, sending "tokens" that identify users for targeted advertising and preload ads that generate revenue even if they're never displayed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: Shekinah and Orlandria Lennon were sitting at their kitchen table this fall, taking online classes, when video of their teachers and fellow students suddenly froze on their laptop screens. The wireless antenna on the roof had stopped working, and it could not be fixed. Desperate for a solution, their mother called five broadband companies, trying to get connections for their home in Orrum, N.C., a rural community of fewer than 100 people with no grocery store or traffic lights. All the companies gave the same answer: Service is not available in your area. The response is the same across broad stretches of Robeson County, N.C., a swath of small towns and rural places like Orrum dotted among soybean fields and hog farms on the South Carolina border. About 20,000 of the county's homes, or 43 percent of all households, have no internet connection.

The technology gap has prompted teachers to upload lessons on flash drives and send them home to dozens of students every other week. Some children spend school nights crashing at more-connected relatives' homes so they can get online for classes the next day. [...] Millions of American students are grappling with the same challenges, learning remotely without adequate home internet service. Even as school districts like the one in Robeson County have scrambled to provide students with laptops, many who live in low-income and rural communities continue to have difficulty logging on. "About 15 million K-12 students lived in households without adequate online connectivity in 2018," the report notes, citing a study of federal data by Common Sense Media, an education nonprofit group that tracks children's media use.

"[T]he pandemic turned the lack of internet connectivity into a nationwide emergency: Suddenly, millions of schoolchildren were cut off from digital learning, unable to maintain virtual 'attendance' and marooned socially from their classmates."

Yesterday, Apple released the latest version of macOS: macOS Big Sur (also known as macOS 11.0) and the rollout was anything but smooth. Many users have complained about Apple services such as iMessage, or even Apple Pay, not working for them. Personally, my 5K iMac (2013), which isn't even compatible with Big Sur, ground to a halt yesterday, as I was unable to open up Google Chrome or any of my Adobe Creative Cloud apps. Even navigating my system preferences was painfully slow.

According to developer Jeff Johnson, the reason apps were failing to launch was because a process called "trustd" failed to attempt to connect to Apple's Online Certificate Status Protocol website (oscp.apple.com). "[D]enying the connection between "trustd" and oscp.apple.com fixes the issue, as does disabling a Mac's connection to the internet," notes Apple Insider. Slashdot reader shanen shares their experience: The story is about different problems, so I'll just start with my own anecdote. The 12GB download was amazingly slow. I'm being charitable and willing to attribute that to high demand. Eventually it did finish. The installation process didn't seem to be too bad. Then I did something with the Mac and it immediately wanted another upgrade. Turned out to be a double upgrade of two slightly different versions of some tools, but another (slow) GB bites the dust. Meanwhile, it decided to do that double-upgrade again? One of those two must have succeeded, because the third attempt failed with the appropriate notice that it had succeeded.

Bottom line? Not reassuring, but it seems to be okay now. I should have made a note about what triggered the extra GB, but I don't think I did anything unusual that should have required an OS-level extension of the system. Ergo, whatever was going on, I think it belonged in the original 12 GB download... Disclaimer needed: I just had an extremely negative interaction with Apple about the battery swelling problem in the course of attempting to consider whether or not I should upgrade my old MacBook Pro. It started on the Apple website, which was amazingly unhelpful even after it dangled a trade-in offer of some kind. Then it continued with a long phone call to a very kind and friendly person who seemed to know not so much, though he eventually led me to the search that revealed "Optimized Battery Charging" as an option that my old Mac cannot use. By the way, new iPhones apparently have it, too. So right now I think Apple finally figured out how to stop the battery swelling, but I am still screwed. I regard the Mac as a sunk cost, and the second rule of sunk cost is to NOT throw good money after bad. The first rule is that no one wants to talk about their mistakes, eh?

So did your upgrade to Big Sur go better than mine? I really hope so. Why share the misery? We have plenty of that with "He whose name need not be mentioned" anymore.

One beta tester of SpaceX's new Starlink satellite internet service is a Reddit user named "wandering-coder". This week they shared their experience online, testing the equpiment in a national forest which gets no cell service from any carrier -- and using it to upload this report: Works beautifully. I did a realtime video call and some tests. My power supply is max 300w, and the drain for the whole system while active was around 116w... It didn't work well with a heavy tree canopy / trees directly in the line of sight, as expected. I would be connected only for about 5 seconds at a time. Make sure you have as clear a view of the sky as possible!
Ars Technica shares more data: As revealed last week, the Starlink beta costs $99 a month plus $499 upfront for the user terminal, mounting tripod, and router... New speed-test data collected by Ookla and published by PCMag last week found average Starlink download speeds of 79.5Mbps and average upload speeds of 13.8Mbps in October, when the service was in a more limited beta. The same data found average download speeds of 24.75Mbps for Viasat's Exede service and 19.84Mbps for HughesNet, both of which offer service from geostationary satellites. Upload speeds for Viasat and HughesNet were 3.25Mbps and 2.64Mbps, respectively. Starlink's low-Earth orbit satellites greatly outperformed the higher-orbit satellites on latency, with Starlink posting a 42ms average. Viasat and HughesNet came in at 643ms and 728ms, respectively, according to PCMag.

SpaceX's invitations to new users last week told them to expect "data speeds vary[ing] from 50Mbps to 150Mbps and latency from 20ms to 40ms over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system... For latency, we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021."

One Montana resident posted a speed test result with a 174Mbps download speed, 33Mbps upload speed, and 39ms latency. "Way out in rural Montana where our alternative is to pay by the gig. Starlink will forever change the game," the beta tester wrote on Reddit yesterday. The Starlink Reddit community has several resources for tracking beta progress, such as a list of user speed tests and a list of states where at least some people received beta invitations.
Engadget points out that Friday SpaceX also won approval to sell Starlink access to Canadians.

And TechSpot shares more reactions from beta testers: According to some early speed tests done in different locations around the US, users are getting anywhere from 100 to 203 Mbps on downlink and around 15 to 33 Mbps on uplink. Meanwhile, the latency varies between 20 to 45 milliseconds, which is pretty much in line with SpaceX estimates.

Upload speeds are still lower than the expected 50 to 150 Mbps, and one user in Idaho reported that connection drops every 2 to 3 minutes in games and video calls are common. One possible explanation for this could be that Starlink's constellation currently has around 800 satellites, which is a low number compared to the target of 12,000 that SpaceX wants to build.
"Of particular interest has been performance in adverse weather," writes long-time Slashdot reader Rei: While the network is still being deployed, Pacific Northwest have been reporting rainy-weather download speeds ranging from ~95-140Mbps, upload from 9-18mbps, and ping times from 32-34ms. The upper range is surprisingly not that different from other November clear-weather data (which, while dramatically higher than September reports, is still supposed to improve over the coming year). The tolerance to adverse weather is likely due multiple satellite paths as well as phased array tuning overcoming wind buffeting. SpaceX does plan to add additional higher frequency V-band transmission to future Starlink satellites, but this should suffer more bad-weather attenuation than the current Ka/Ku-band.
He also notes that SpaceX engineers have a nickname for the hardware. "Dishy McFlatface."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: France's Neoen SA will partner with Tesla Inc. to install one of the world's biggest lithium-ion batteries in Australia after reaching a grid connection deal with the power market operator. The 300-megawatt Victorian Big Battery will be located in the southeastern city of Geelong and use Tesla's Megapack technology. It will be double the size of Neoen's Hornsdale site in South Australia, which was the largest facility when it began operation in 2017.

Installing the new system in Australia's second-most populous state will help to modernize and stabilize the local grid, which is targeting 50% of its power to come from renewable sources by 2030, Neoen said Thursday in a media release. The Paris-based company is targeting the battery to be operational by the end of 2021. [...] Victoria's grid still relies heavily on aging coal-fired plants, which have become increasingly unreliable during periods of extreme heat. The state has experienced power outages in recent summers as the system struggled to cope with a surge in demand as businesses and households cranked up air conditioners. Neoen's new project in Victoria will be supported by a 250 megawatt grid services contract with the Australian Energy Market Operator, and will also partner with network provider AusNet Services, the company said.

Massachusetts overwhelmingly voted to extend its automobile right to repair law, in a huge win for consumers. From a report: Question 1 was the most expensive measure battle in Massachusetts history with the auto industry (and independent repair companies) spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying, according to the Boston Globe. The measure is an essential win for independent mechanics, auto-repair shops, and consumers, as it will require car manufacturers to continue to make diagnostic tools available for years to come. Under the law, car manufacturers will be required to use an open-data system in cars using telematics. This means mechanics will have access to wirelessly sent repair data -- whether they are associated with an official car dealership or an independent shop. While cars currently use a wired connection for diagnostics, there was concern among independent repair professionals that car manufacturers would switch to a wireless system in order to circumvent a 2012 right to repair law that required car dealers make wired repair codes universal. As new car models are produced in coming years, the thought is many will ditch physical diagnostic ports and instead, cars will wirelessly send repair information. Tuesday's ballot measure closes a loophole in the 2012 law that would have exempted wireless diagnostics from the law. Right to repair advocates have hailed the measure. iFixit's Kevin Purdy wrote of the significance of the vote, "that means that independent repair shops will have a level playing field with car makers and dealerships, which have turned increasingly to locked-down wirelessly collected repair data, or telematics. Car owners, too, will be able to see their cars' maintenance information through a smartphone app. And it opens the door for innovations, like wireless diagnostic apps for iOS and Android."