Just 1 percent of all Reddit communities set off 74 percent of all conflicts on the site, a new research has found. The Outline: In the self-published research from Srijan Kumar, Jure Leskoec, William Hamilton, and Dan Jurafsky of Stanford University, "intercommunity conflict" is defined as "negative sentiment to comment in another community." These users wouldn't necessarily qualify as trolls or sockpuppets; they're instigators, posting links to other subreddits and encouraging other users to target, harass, and fight with users on that subreddit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Grayshift, a company that offers to unlock modern iPhones for as little as $50 each, has caused a buzz across law enforcement agencies, with local police already putting down cash for the much sought-after tech. Now, it appears a section of the U.S. State Department has also purchased the iPhone cracking tool, judging by procurement records reviewed by Motherboard. Grayshift's iPhone product, dubbed GrayKey, can unlock devices running versions of Apple's latest mobile operating system iOS 11, according to marketing material obtained by Forbes. An online version of GrayKey which allows 300 unlocks costs $15,000 (which boils down to $50 per device), and an offline capability with unlimited uses is $30,000. According to a recent post from cybersecurity firm Malwarebytes, which obtained leaked details on GrayKey, the product itself is a small, four inch by four inch box, and two iPhones can be connected at once via lightning cables. Malwarebytes adds that the time it takes to unlock a device varies depending on the strength of the user's passcode: it may be hours or days. Notably, Grayshift includes an ex-Apple engineer on its staff, Forbes reported.

On March 6, the State Department ordered an item from Grayshift for just over $15,000, according to a purchase order listing available on the U.S. government's public federal procurement data system. The listing is sparse on details, putting the order under the generic label of "computer and computer peripheral equipment." But Motherboard confirmed that the Grayshift in the State Department listing is the same as the one selling iPhone cracking tech: the phone number of the vendor in both the purchase order and documents Motherboard previously obtained detailing a GrayKey purchase by Indiana State Police is the same. The "funding office" for the Grayshift purchase was the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, according to the procurement records. The Bureau acts as the law enforcement and security arm of the State Department, bearing "the core responsibility for providing a safe environment for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy," the State Department website reads.

hackingbear writes from a report: Amazon is reportedly likely to earmark $1 billion for a television series (Warning: source paywalled, alternative source) based on the ultra-popular Chinese science fiction trilogy The Three Body Problem. The American video subscription service will likely acquire the rights to the Yugo-winning, extremely popular trilogy of novels written by Liu Cixin and produce three seasons of episodes. The rights to the trilogy are currently owned by Lin Qi, the chairman of Youzu Interactive, a Chinese developer and publisher that typically focuses on online and mobile games.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Los Angeles Times: "Mad" Mike Hughes, the rocket man who believes the Earth is flat, propelled himself about 1,875 feet into the air Saturday before a hard landing in the Mojave Desert. He told the Associated Press that outside of an aching back he's fine after the launch near Amboy, Calif. The launch in the sparsely populated desert town about 150 miles east of Los Angeles -- was originally scheduled in November. It was scrubbed several times due to logistical issues with the Bureau of Land Management and mechanical problems that kept popping up. The 61-year-old limo driver converted a mobile home into a ramp and modified it to launch from a vertical angle so he wouldn't fall back to the ground on public land. For months he's been working on overhauling his rocket in his garage. It looked like Saturday might be another in a string of cancellations, given that the wind was blowing and his rocket was losing steam. Ideally, they wanted it at 350 psi for maximum thrust, but it was dropping to 340. Sometime after 3 p.m. PDT, and without a countdown, Hughes' rocket soared into the sky. Hughes reached a speed that Stakes estimated to be around 350 mph before pulling his parachute. Hughes was dropping too fast, though, and he had to deploy a second one. He landed with a thud and the rocket's nose broke in two places like it was designed to do.

New submitter future guy shares a report from New Atlas: A fascinating study led by scientists at the University of Zurich has uncovered key insights into the mechanisms behind how our brain generates our sense of self. The researchers administered lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to several participants in order to home in on where in the brain our sense of self is activated and what happens when a powerful psychedelic drug interferes with that process. The study administered 24 subjects either LSD, LSD in combination with ketanserin, or a placebo. Ketanserin is a compound that is known to inhibit many of the effects of LSD by blocking the serotonin 2A receptor (5-HT2A receptor). Each subject lay in an MRI scanner while undergoing a series of social interaction simulations with a virtual avatar. As well as the brain imaging, the subjects' eye movements were monitored to track when they were or were not following the gaze of the virtual avatar.

The study demonstrated LSD-altered brain activity in several regions previously identified as fundamental for developing coherent self-representation during social interaction, including the posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex and the angular gyrus. Most importantly though was the observation that ketanserin normalized the effects of LSD to the point where the group influenced by ketanserin and LSD displayed similar results to those under the effect of the placebo. These results strongly suggest that the 5-HT2A receptor plays a fundamental role in the development of self-awareness, and differentiation between the self and others. The value of this research is two-fold. As well as simply increasing our knowledge of how the brain functions under the influence of psychedelic drugs, it is suggested that different psychiatric conditions could be treated by manipulating the 5-HT2A receptor pathways. The study has been published in the journal JNeurosci.

dryriver writes: Before I ask my question, there already is free and open-source software (FOSS) for wind turbine design and simulation called QBlade. It lets you calculate turbine blade performance using nothing more than a computer and appears compatible with Xfoil as well. But consider this: the ultimate, most efficient and most real-world usable and widely deployable wind turbine rotor may not have traditional "blades" or "foils" at all, but may be a non-propeller-like, complex and possibly rather strange looking three-dimensional rotor of the sort that only a 3D printer could prototype easily. It may be on a vertical or horizontal axis. It may have air flowing through canals in its non-traditional structure, rather than just around it. Nobody really knows what this "ultimate wind turbine rotor" may look like.

The easiest way to find such a rotor might be through machine-learning. You get an algorithm to create complex non-traditional 3D rotor shapes, simulate their behavior in wind, and then mutate the design, simulate again, and get a machine learning algorithm to learn what sort of mutations lead to a better performing 3D rotor. In theory, enough iterations -- perhaps millions or more -- should eventually lead to the "ultimate rotor" or something closer to it than what is used in wind turbines today. Is this something FOSS developers could tackle, or is this task too complex for non-commercial software? The real world impact of such a FOSS project could be that far better wind turbines can be designed, manufactured and deployed than currently exist, and the fight against climate change becomes more effective; the better your wind turbines perform, and the more usable they are, the more of a fighting chance humanity has to do something against climate change. Could FOSS achieve this?

On Friday, Tumblr said it has taken down 84 accounts used by Russia to spread disinformation ahead of the 2016 presidential election. The accounts were reportedly linked to the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency. The Hill reports: Special counsel Robert Mueller last month indicted 13 Russians and three Russian entities associated with the Internet Research Agency who are accused of orchestrating an elaborate plot to spread divisive messages to U.S. audiences on social media ahead of the election. The individuals face multiple charges, including identity theft and bank fraud. Tumblr said in a statement Friday that it provided information on the 84 Russia-linked accounts from its investigation to the Justice Department. Tumblr said the Russia-linked accounts were solely focused on spreading disinformation by posting "organic content." The company found no indication that the accounts purchased any advertisements. The platform says it will notify any users who interacted with the accounts and provide them with a list of usernames they engaged with. Tumblr also disclosed that it will keep a public record of usernames linked to the Internet Research Agency or other state-sponsored disinformation efforts for the sake of transparency.

schwit1 shares a report from CNET, written by Claire Reilly: In 2015, during the transition from paper to Opal [contactless public transit cards], Australia passed sweeping new data retention laws. These laws required all Australian internet service providers and telecommunications carriers to retain customers' phone and internet metadata for two years -- details like the phone number a person calls, the timestamps on text messages or the cell tower a phone pings when it makes a call. Suddenly, Australians were fighting for the right to stay anonymous in a digital world. On one side of the fence: safety-conscious civilians. They argued that this metadata was a powerful tool and that the ability to track a person's movements through phone pings or call times was vital for law enforcement. On the other side of the fence: digital civil libertarians. They argued that the data retention scheme was invasive and that this metadata could be used to build up an incredibly detailed picture of someone's life. And sitting in a barn two paddocks away from that fence: me, switching out burner phones and researching VPNs. When it emerged that police had the power to search Opal card data, track people's movements and match this to individual users, it was the last straw. August 2016 rolled around, paperless tickets were phased out and I hatched my plan. The Black Opal. The concept of the Black Opal is simple. Buy your transport card. Pay cash. Top up with cash (preferably in a new location each time). Never register it. Never link it to your credit or debit card. Live off the grid. Stay away from The Man.

[Reilly discusses the problems she faced:] All the top-up machines at train stations, light rail stops and ferry terminals were card-only affairs. One tap on that baby and you were back in the system. So, if I was busing downtown for a work meeting, I'd have to factor in extra time to get to an ATM, get cash out and then find somewhere to top up my card. Running for the train with friends, I was the one who had to divert three blocks, change jackets, burn off my fingerprints and find a nondescript corner store to top up. Here's what I learned. No one likes the paranoid one. [...] I finally came undone last week. Racing for a flight, I forgot about my Black Opal. I'd had an unusually busy week on public transport, and my balance was low. On the train to the airport terminal, it hit me. Did I have enough money on my card to pay the AU$17.76 tap-off fee that they use to gouge tourists at the airport? As I rode up the escalators and the exit turnstiles came into view, my heart sank. No ATM. No cash in my wallet. Just a row of bright green Opal readers and a top-up machine. Card only. With one trip, my years of off-grid living were undone. I slumped against the top-up machine and swiped my debit card. I was just 9 cents short, but it cost me so much more than that. My Black Opal was dead.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: Zuckerberg should have heeded what he heard from the late Steve Jobs eight years ago. Then, when the social network had a measly half-billion users, Jobs spoke at The Wall Street Journal's AllThingsD conference, where Zuckerberg was in the audience, waiting to be interviewed himself, and described what privacy meant. Journalist Walt Mossberg asked Jobs his thoughts on recent privacy issues around Facebook (which at the time was revamping its privacy controls after criticism it was forcing people to share data) and Google (which was literally recording private wifi information), and whether Silicon Valley looks at privacy differently than the rest of the world.

"Silicon Valley is not monolithic," Jobs responded, "We've always had a very different view of privacy than some of our colleagues in the Valley." Apple, for instance, does not leave it up to developers to decide whether to be dutiful about warning users that their apps are tracking their location data, instead forcing pop-ups on users to alert them that an app is tracking them, and to turn off that ability if they don't want. "We do a lot of things like that, to ensure that people know what these apps are doing," he added. It's a stance his successor, Tim Cook, still holds. Mossberg then asked Jobs if that applied to Apple's own apps in the cloud. Here's what Jobs said: "Privacy means people know what they're signing up for, in plain English, and repeatedly. I'm an optimist; I believe people are smart, and some people want to share more data than other people do. Ask them. Ask them every time. Make them tell you to stop asking them if they get tired of your asking them. Let them know precisely what you're going to do with their data." If the company had been more forthright about how developers could take data shared with them by Facebook users and sold to third parties, it may not have been in the mess it's in today. Additionally, TechCrunch reports that Zuckerberg was warned about app permissions in 2011 by European privacy campaigner and lawyer Max Schrems. "In August 2011, Schrems filed a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission exactly flagging the app permissions data sinkhole (Ireland being the focal point for the complaint because that's where Facebook's European HQ is based)."

"[T]his means that not the data subject but 'friends' of the data subject are consenting to the use of personal data," wrote Schrems in the 2011 complaint, fleshing out consent concerns with Facebook's friends' data API. "Since an average facebook user has 130 friends, it is very likely that only one of the user's friends is installing some kind of spam or phishing application and is consenting to the use of all data of the data subject. There are many applications that do not need to access the users' friends personal data (e.g. games, quizzes, apps that only post things on the user's page) but Facebook Ireland does not offer a more limited level of access than 'all the basic information of all friends.'" [...] "The data subject is not given an unambiguous consent to the processing of personal data by applications (no opt-in). Even if a data subject is aware of this entire process, the data subject cannot foresee which application of which developer will be using which personal data in the future. Any form of consent can therefore never be specific," he added. It took Facebook from September 2012 until May 2014 and May 2015 to implement changes and tighten app permissions.

"Android phone makers are 'rushing' to implement fingerprint sensors under the display for upcoming handsets," reports 9to5Mac, citing a new report from Digitimes. "Android manufacturers have decided that recreating the 3D facial recognition used by iPhone X is simply too costly to include, and are instead focusing on implementing Qualcomm's ultrasonic fingerprint scanners." From the report: The report says that including an Infrared depth-sensing facial recognition system like the iPhone X is simply too expensive for Android smartphones to offer, which cannot command the same price premiums as Apple's iPhones. This is a combination of hardware and software development costs. Digitimes claims the cost of the TrueDepth 3D sensors in iPhone X peaked at $60 per unit, an incredibly high proportion of the overall phone cost if accurate. Android makers are also worried about possible patent infringement from adopting Infrared dot projector systems. Instead, they have turned to in-display fingerprint sensors as their next-generation of device authentication. This depends on using Qualcomm technology for ultrasonic-based fingerprint scanners, which can sit below the cover glass and work even if fingers are wet or greasy.

fstack writes: Pi Day was marked this year by the launch of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ as the next evolution to this $35 ARM single-board computer. Phoronix has now put out Raspberry Pi 3 B+ benchmarks showing that the Ethernet performance is indeed much faster now but still doesn't stack up to other high performance boards, the SoC temperature is noticeably lower than the very warm Raspberry Pi 3, and the overall performance is a nice upgrade while retaining the same price point as its predecessors. Follow up tests looking at the Wi-Fi performance also show the new 802.11ac dual-band wireless to be much faster as well.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Porn performer Avey Moon was trying to send the lucky winner of her Chaturbate contest his prize -- one of her videos, titled "POV Blowjob" -- through her Google Drive account. But it wouldn't send, and Google wasn't telling her why. "I thought there was something wrong with my file and I got rather worried," Moon told me in a Twitter message. "I had promised this guy his content and he was so good to me. I was panicked because I thought if I couldn't give him his prize, he would feel like he got ripped off and never come back again or worse, he could actually file a complaint with Chaturbate about me and they can take money from me." She's not alone. Six porn performers I talked to and more on social media said that they suddenly can't download adult content they keep on Google Drive. They also said they can't a share that content with other accounts or send to clients. In some cases, the adult content is disappearing from Drive without warning or explanation. The porn performers I talked to started sounding the alarm on Twitter last week. They said that Google Drive no longer seemed sex-trade friendly, detailing error messages and sharing cloud storage alternatives with each other.

When I asked about sexual content being blocked on Drive, a spokesperson for Google directed me to the Drive policy page -- specifically the section on sexually explicit material, which says, "Do not publish sexually explicit or pornographic images or videos.... Additionally, we do not allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography." Writing about porn and sex is permitted, the policy states, as long as it's not accompanied by sexually explicit images or videos. According to Google, Drive uses a combination of automated systems and manual review to decide what's in violation. One worker said they've been using Google Drive for most of the last five and a half years but just recently received an error message when sending a video, saying that the item may violate Google's Terms of Service, with a link to request a review. In this case, the video title was explicit, but other adult performers report similar messages when sending content with non-explicit titles. "Some sex workers are wondering if this has something to do with the impending vote on the SESTA-FOSTA bill," reports Motherboard. We now have learned that the Senate has passed the bill.

"FBI and Justice Department officials have been quietly meeting with security researchers who have been working on approaches to provide such 'extraordinary access' to encrypted devices," reports The New York Times (alternative source), citing people familiar with the matter. Justice Department officials believe that these "mechanisms allowing access to the data" exist without weakening the devices' security against hacking. Slashdot reader schwit1 shares the report: Against that backdrop, law enforcement officials have revived talks inside the executive branch over whether to ask Congress to enact legislation mandating the access mechanisms. The Trump White House circulated a memo last month among security and economic agencies outlining ways to think about solving the problem, officials said. The FBI has been agitating for versions of such a mandate since 2010, complaining that the spreading use of encryption is eroding investigators' ability to carry out wiretap orders and search warrants -- a problem it calls "going dark." The issue repeatedly flared without resolution under the Obama administration, peaking in 2016, when the government tried to force Apple to help it break into the iPhone of one of the attackers in the terrorist assault in San Bernardino, Calif. The debate receded when the Trump administration took office, but in recent months top officials like Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, and Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director, have begun talking publicly about the "going dark" problem. The National Security Council and the Justice Department declined to comment about the internal deliberations. The people familiar with the talks spoke on the condition of anonymity, cautioning that they were at a preliminary stage and that no request for legislation was imminent. But the renewed push is certain to be met with resistance.

theodp writes: Nearly a week after an autonomous Uber SUV claimed the first life in testing of self-driving vehicles, The Washington Post reports that Waymo CEO John Krafcik says he is confident its cars would have performed differently under the circumstances (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), since they are intensively programmed to avoid such calamities. "I can say with some confidence that in situations like that one with pedestrians -- in this case a pedestrian with a bicycle -- we have a lot of confidence that our technology would be robust and would be able to handle situations like that," Krafcik said Saturday when asked if a Waymo car would have reacted differently than the self-driving Uber.

In explaining its since-settled lawsuit against Uber last year, Google charged that Uber was "using key parts of Waymo's self-driving technology," and added it was "seeking an injunction to stop the misappropriation of our designs." In announcing the settlement of the lawsuit last month, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noted, "we are taking steps with Waymo to ensure our LIDAR and software represents just our good work." A Google spokesperson added, "We have reached an agreement with Uber that we believe will protect Waymo's intellectual property now and into the future. We are committed to working with Uber to make sure that each company develops its own technology. This includes an agreement to ensure that any Waymo confidential information is not being incorporated in Uber Advanced Technologies Group hardware and software." All of which might prompt some to ask: was Elaine Herzberg collateral damage in Google and Uber's IP war? "I want to be really respectful of Elaine [Herzberg], the woman who lost her life and her family," Krafcik continued. "I also want to recognize the fact that there are many different investigations going on now regarding what happened in Tempe on Sunday." His assessment, he said, was "based on our knowledge of what we've seen so far with the accident and our own knowledge of the robustness that we've designed into our systems."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: This past week, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had collected from him in an archive he had pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing: Facebook also had about two years worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone, including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received. This experience has been shared by a number of other Facebook users who spoke with Ars, as well as independently by us -- my own Facebook data archive, I found, contained call-log data for a certain Android device I used in 2015 and 2016, along with SMS and MMS message metadata. In response to an email inquiry about this data gathering by Ars, a Facebook spokesperson replied, "The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a messaging or social app, it's a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone contacts." The spokesperson pointed out that contact uploading is optional and installation of the application explicitly requests permission to access contacts. And users can delete contact data from their profiles using a tool accessible via Web browser.

If you granted permission to read contacts during Facebook's installation on Android a few versions ago -- specifically before Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) -- that permission also granted Facebook access to call and message logs by default. The permission structure was changed in the Android API in version 16. But Android applications could bypass this change if they were written to earlier versions of the API, so Facebook API could continue to gain access to call and SMS data by specifying an earlier Android SDK version. Google deprecated version 4.0 of the Android API in October 2017 -- the point at which the latest call metadata in Facebook user's data was found. Apple iOS has never allowed silent access to call data. You are able to have Facebook delete the data it collects from you, "but it's not clear if this deletes just contacts or if it also purges call and SMS metadata," reports Ars. Generally speaking, if you're concerned about privacy, you shouldn't share your contacts and call-log data with any mobile application.