dryriver writes: Chinese researchers have taken tissue from a beta-thallasemia patient, created cloned embryos from that patient's cells, and used a genetic editing technique known as Base Editing to correct the gene mutation that causes beta-thallasemia. The embryos were not implanted in a womb, so no actual babies were created during the procedure. The BBC reports: "Precise 'chemical surgery' has been performed on human embryos to remove disease in a world first, Chinese researchers have told the BBC. The team at Sun Yat-sen University used a technique called base editing to correct a single error out of the three billion 'letters' of our genetic code. They altered lab-made embryos to remove the disease beta-thalassemia. The embryos were not implanted. The team says the approach may one day treat a range of inherited diseases. Base editing alters the fundamental building blocks of DNA: the four bases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine. Base editing works on the DNA bases themselves to convert one into another. Prof David Liu, who pioneered base editing at Harvard University, describes the approach as 'chemical surgery.' He says the technique is more efficient and has fewer unwanted side-effects than Crispr. He told the BBC: 'About two-thirds of known human genetic variants associated with disease are point mutations. So base editing has the potential to directly correct, or reproduce for research purposes, many pathogenic [mutations].'"

New submitter Rick Schumann writes about California considering a ban on internal combustion engines: The ban on internal-combustion engine automobiles would be at least 10 years away, and it's unclear at this early stage if it would ban only sales and use of new cars, or ban existing cars as well. There's also no mention of two (or three) wheeled vehicles at this stage. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is nevertheless considering this seriously, in order to meet its ambitious emissions reduction goals. According to state data, tailpipes generate more than one-third of all greenhouse gases, and so far only a small fraction of California's motorists drive electric vehicles. The announcement was made in an interview with Bloomberg news. "I've gotten messages from the governor asking, 'Why haven't we done something already?' The governor has certainly indicated an interest in why China can do this and not California," Mary Nichols, the chairwoman of the CARB, told Bloomberg.

Yesterday, Amazon announced six new hardware products at a surprise event in Seattle. The one that everyone is talking about though is called the Echo Spot -- a little alarm clock with a camera that will probably be pointing directly at your bed. "While all the focus is on what the Echo Spot looks like, it's important to remember that Amazon is using the Spot as a very clever way of making you comfortable with having a camera in your bedroom," reports The Verge. From the report: Amazon launched its Echo Look camera earlier this year to judge your outfits. It's designed to sit in your wardrobe and offer you style advice, and it was Amazon's first Echo device with a camera. Amazon quickly followed it up with the Echo Show, a touchscreen device that sits in your kitchen and lets you watch tutorials or recipes and participate in video calls. Amazon's Look device is still only available exclusively by invitation, and in hindsight it now looks like experimental hardware to gauge the reaction of a camera in the bedroom. A litmus test, if you will. Echo Spot feels like the real push to get cameras inside your smart home. It's more than just an alarm clock, but Amazon is definitely pushing this as a $130 device that will sit next to your bed. Promotional materials show it sitting on nightstands, providing a selection of clock faces and news / weather information. The privacy concerns are obvious: an always-listening (for a keyword) microphone in your bedroom, and a camera pointing at your bed.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Exstreamist: Comcast announced this week that they plan on rolling out their streaming service, "Xfinity Instant TV" as an option for broadband-only customers. At our very first glance, it seemed like a pretty good deal, a live-streaming service for $18 a month, not bad right? But once we actually looked into the offering, we noticed something funny. Almost the entirety of what they're planning on charging $18 a month for could be viewed free with an antenna. According to the Wall Street Journal, the antenna as an option is apparently a long lost TV option for many consumers. Variety is reporting, "Xfinity Instant TV" intro packages, the ones that are $18, will only include a handful of broadcast channels, and a few "freebies" like the Home Shopping Network, and CSPAN So we're not exactly talking about getting access to ESPN, CNN, FX, or other more desirable channels for cord cutters, those will cost you at least $45 more a month, so basically the cost of your current cable television package. The report notes that the service is only available to Comcast internet subscribers and does include access to on-demand services.

According to a security guide published Wednesday, Apple recommends that children under the age of 13 do not use Face ID on the iPhone X due to the probability of a false match being significantly higher for young children. The company said this was because "their distinct facial features may not have fully developed." They also recommend that twins and siblings do not use the new feature. The Guardian reports: In all those situations, the company recommends concerned users disable Face ID and use a passcode instead. With Face ID, Apple has implemented a secondary system that exclusively looks out for attempts to fool the technology. Both the authentication and spoofing defense are based on machine learning, but while the former is trained to identify individuals from their faces, the latter is used to look for telltale signs of cheating. "An additional neural network that's trained to spot and resist spoofing defends against attempts to unlock your phone with photos or masks," the company says. If a completely perfect mask is made, which fools the identification neural network, the defensive system will still notice -- just like a human.

Longtime Slashdot reader Bruce Perens writes: The U.S. Air Force has transferred control of a 10-year-old orbiting satellite to AMSAT, a ham radio organization, which has enabled it for any licensed ham to use on the air, as the satellite's Air Force missions have ended. Falconsat 3's first mission was science: measuring gravity gradient, spectrometry of the plasmasphere, electronic noise in the plasmasphere, and testing three-axis attitude control using microthrusters. Secondarily it was used to train Air Force Institute of Technology students in space operations, with close to 700 cadets obtaining ham licenses in order to operate a number of Air Force satellites using ham frequencies.

Now in its third mission, control of the satellite has been transferred to AMSAT, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation, and all government frequencies have been disabled with only ham ones remaining. The satellite will relay APRS (position and status reporting) signals, it will operate a BBS in the sky, and will broadcast telemetry.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Twitter says it found some 200 accounts linked to the same Russian groups that bought $100,000 worth of ads on Facebook to sow political unrest and manipulate U.S. voters during the presidential election. The Twitter accounts, which were taken down over the last month, were linked to 470 accounts and pages that Facebook traced to the International Research Agency, a Russian troll farm. According to a blog post released by Twitter Thursday after briefing staffers on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the groups on Facebook had 22 Twitter accounts. Twitter found an additional 179 accounts connected to those 22. Twitter also shared information on Russian news outlet Russia Today, or RT, which has ties to the Kremlin, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.

From a report: U.S. stores have been closing at a faster rate in 2017 than at any time since the recession, an American phenomenon being dubbed "retail apocalypse." Though this has so-far been largely a worry for U.S. retailers, the Wall Street Journal reports that investors in Europe are worried that it is now spreading abroad.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai pushed Apple on Friday to activate the FM radio chips in the iPhone. From a report: In the wake of three major hurricanes that have wiped out communications for millions of people over the past month, Pai issued a statement urging Apple, one of the largest makers of cellphones in the US, to "reconsider its position, given the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria." FM radios that are already included in every phone could be used to access "life-saving information" during disasters, he said. For years the majority of smartphones sold in the US have included FM radios, but most of them have been turned off so that you couldn't use the function. Why? Mobile customers would be a lot less likely to subscribe to streaming music services if they could just listen to traditional, free broadcast radio. This incentive is especially true for Apple, which has a streaming music service. Apple said in a statement: "iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models do not have FM radio chips in them nor do they have antennas designed to support FM signals, so it is not possible to enable FM reception in these products."

An anonymous reader shares a report: In the past two years, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Oracle have faced various high-profile lawsuits related to their employment practices. And while those cases generated headlines, workers in almost every sector sue their bosses over emotional abuse, unpaid wages, and discrimination. The ability to sue over wrongful treatment at work is essential to the balance of bargaining power between employer and employee. Unfortunately, more than half of non-union, privately employed Americans -- some 60 million people -- have signed away this right. They are instead beholden to a process known as arbitration. Signing a mandatory arbitration agreement is theoretically voluntary, but refusing to do so can cost a candidate their job offer. Once signed, the agreement strips the employee of the right to take her employer to court for unfairly low pay, termination because of pregnancy, race-based discrimination, loss of paternity or maternity leave, and much more. According to a study published this week by Alexander Colvin of Cornell, more than half (54%) of private, non-unionized workplaces have mandatory arbitration procedures. For larger companies (over 1,000 workers), that jumps to 65%. By contrast, in 2003 Colvin found that just 14% of companies had arbitration agreements.

One of the most popular jobs on TaskRabbit, a service that lets you hire workers for quick gigs, is assembling Ikea furniture. So perhaps it's no surprise that the Swedish retail giant has acquired the startup for an undisclosed price. From a report: For now, TaskRabbit services -- where each worker sets their own rates but the company takes 20 percent -- are available in 40 American cities and in London. The majority of its American workers (or "taskers" as the company dubs them) do not receive any health or retirement benefits, as is typical in so-called "gig economy" jobs. While TaskRabbit itself has not been sued in federal court by any of its workers so far, other companies in the industry have been -- numerous labor cases filed against Uber were recently heard at the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeal in San Francisco. It seems unlikely that Swedish business culture will have any impact on TaskRabbit's workers, the overwhelming majority of whom are ad hoc contractors. Sweden, which generally lacks a similar "gig economy" environment, boasts universal public health care and housing and child care subsidies. Employees in Sweden are required to be provided a minimum of five weeks paid annual leave, and wages are typically set by annual collective bargaining. According to Ikea's statement, TaskRabbit will remain an independent company and will remain in San Francisco -- as such, its taskers aren't considered to be employees.

Mark Wilson writes: Android users have been slowly discovering that Google has killed off NFC Smart Unlock. The feature, which makes it possible to unlock a phone with an NFC device such as a ring or bracelet, has been discontinued without explanation. Earlier in the month, Android users started to post messages on Google's Issue Tracker website, indicating that the feature was no longer available to them. Three weeks later, Google has finally responded, indicating that NFC Smart Unlock has been deprecated.

Tens of millions of years after it disappeared under the waters of the Pacific Ocean, scientists have completed the first explorations of what some scientists are calling a hidden continent. From a report: During a two-month ocean voyage this summer, a team of more than 30 scientists from 12 countries explored the submerged landmass of Zealandia on an advanced research vessel and collected samples from the seabed. Scientists were able to drill into the ocean floor at depths of more than 4,000 feet, collecting more than 8,000 feet of sediment cores that provides a window into 70 million years of geologic history, reports Georgie Burgess for ABC News. More than 8,000 fossils from hundreds of species were also collected in the drilling, giving scientists a glimpse at terrestrial life that lived tens of millions of years ago in the area. "The discovery of microscopic shells of organisms that lived in warm shallow seas, and of spores and pollen from land plants, reveal that the geography and climate of Zealandia were dramatically different in the past," expedition leader Gerald Dickens said in a statement. While more than 90 percent of Zealandia is now submerged under more than a kilometer (two-thirds of a mile) of water, when it was above the surface, it likely provided a path that many land animals and plants could have used to spread across the South Pacific, notes Naaman Zhou of the Guardian.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Essential Products has sold an estimated 5,000 phones through Sprint since the gadget made its big retail debut in the United States earlier this month, according to estimates from BayStreet Research. That figure would put Essential, whose maker became a unicorn without shipping handset, well below market heavyweights like Apple and Samsung, which typically sell tens of millions of phones per quarter in the United States. BayStreet tracks shipments of phones and other devices across the United States. Essential representatives didn't respond to requests for comment on the BayStreet estimates. BayStreet also clarified that its 5,000 figure is an estimate of Essential's sell-through (when a customer buys a product from a retailer) rather than its sell-in (when a retailer buys something from a manufacturer). Sprint is the exclusive carrier for the phone; most phones in the United States are sold through carriers. However, Essential also offers an unlocked version of its gadget. Essential, the first major startup from Android founder Andy Rubin's venture capital firm Playground, currently sells the $699 Android-powered Essential Phone through Sprint and promises to release the Essential Home smart-home hub later this year. Essential was named as one of FierceWireless' top 15 startups to watch in 2017.