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Submission + - SPAM: What really went on inside the Wuhan lab weeks before Covid erupted

schwit1 writes: Fresh evidence drawn from confidential files reveals Chinese scientists spliced together deadly pathogens shortly before the pandemic, the Sunday Times Insight team report

Scientists in Wuhan working alongside the Chinese military were combining the world’s most deadly coronaviruses to create a new mutant virus just as the pandemic began.

Investigators who scrutinised top-secret intercepted communications and scientific research believe Chinese scientists were running a covert project of dangerous experiments, which caused a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and started the Covid-19 outbreak.

The US investigators say one of the reasons there is no published information on the work is because it was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese military, which was funding it and which, they say, was pursuing bioweapons.

[Dr Steven Quay, a US scientist who advised the State Department on its investigation] believes Covid-19 was created by inserting a furin cleavage site into one of the mine viruses and then serial passaging it through humanised mice. He submitted a statement to the US Senate explaining the process. “You infect the mice, wait a week or so, and then recover the virus from the sickest mice. Then you repeat. In a matter of weeks this directed evolution will produce a virus that can kill every humanised mouse.”

This explains why from the beginning of the outbreak, he says, the pandemic virus was so remarkably well adapted to infect humans.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Court: Feds Need Warrant for Device Searches at Border (eff.org) 1

SonicSpike writes: With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other district courts have wanted to do so).

U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP) asserts broad authority to conduct warrantless, and often suspicionless, device searches at the border, which includes ports of entry at the land borders, international airports, and seaports.

For a century, the Supreme Court has recognized a border search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, allowing not only warrantless but also often suspicionless searches of luggage and other items crossing the border.

The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2022, CBP conducted an all-time high of 45,499 device searches.

The Supreme Court has not yet considered the application of the border search exception to smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices that contain the equivalent of millions of pages of information detailing the most intimate details of our lives—even though we asked them to back in 2021.

Submission + - Reddit's New API Policy Squeezes Out Third-Party Apps

nearmex writes: Recently, Reddit has updated its API policy, and it's having a big impact on third-party applications. These new rules impose strict limitations on data access and usage, causing many apps that rely on Reddit's data to malfunction or stop working entirely.

This policy change mainly restricts how much data third-party apps can pull from Reddit and puts tougher rules on how this data can be used. It seems like Reddit is trying to keep its users on its own platform rather than on various third-party apps.

Submission + - Despite statements to the contrary, Acer is still shipping PCs to Russia

Required Snark writes: Acer Electronics is selling computers in Russia even though they claimed they would abide by the Taiwanese government's commitment to the international embargo on western technology. The sales are through their Swiss subsidiary Acer Sales International SA. This subterfuge means Acer's position is nominally true even while they are breaking the embargo. Neither Russian, Swiss or Taiwanese government officials would comment on the report.

Submission + - 10 Years After Snowden's First Leak, What Have We Learned? (theregister.com)

An anonymous reader writes: The world got a first glimpse into the US government's far-reaching surveillance of American citizens' communications – namely, their Verizon telephone calls – 10 years ago this week when Edward Snowden's initial leaks hit the press. [...] In the decade since then, "reformers have made real progress advancing the bipartisan notion that Americans' liberty and security are not mutually exclusive," [US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)] said. "That has delivered tangible results: in 2015 Congress ended bulk collection of Americans' phone records by passing the USA Freedom Act." This bill sought to end the daily snooping into American's phone calls by forcing telcos to collect the records and make the Feds apply for the information.

That same month, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the NSA's phone-records surveillance program was unlawful. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued to end the secret phone spying program, which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just days after Snowden disclosed its existence. "Once it was pushed out into open court, and the court was able to hear from two sides and not just one, the court held that the program was illegal," Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology project, told The Register. The Freedom Act also required the federal government to declassify and release "significant" opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and authorized the appointment of independent amici – friends of the court intended to provide an outside perspective. The FISC was established in 1978 under the FISA – the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping. And prior to the Freedom Act, this top-secret court only heard the government's perspective on things, like why the FBI and NSA should be allowed to scoop up private communications.

"To its credit, the government has engaged in reforms, and there's more transparency now that, on the one hand, has helped build back some trust that was lost, but also has made it easier to shine a light on surveillance misconduct that has happened since then," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told The Register. Wyden also pointed to the sunsetting of the "deeply flawed surveillance law," Section 215 of the Patriot Act, as another win for privacy and civil liberties. That law expired in March 2020 after Congress did not reauthorize it. "For years, the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records (Call Detail Records or CDR) documenting who a person called and for how long they called them – more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with, and the private nature of those relationships," Electronic Frontier Foundation's Matthew Guariglia, Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker said.

Comment So where's NASA in all this? (Score 1) 76

I thought the Russians were NASA's partners and it's been obvious for a few years now that they've been dropping the ball (interesting that the uncommanded docked thruster firings that caused the ISS to lose attitude control wasn't mentioned).

So where's NASA's Inspector General on this and what is their plan to mitigate missed commitments by the Russians?

I would think NASA should be having daily calls to Gwen Shotwell about increasing ISS support capacity - SpaceX seems to be NASA's only reliable partner.

Comment MST3K's time has passed. Let's move on (Score 2) 19

For me and probably most people here who remember it when it first was broadcast, it was something to watch in the early '90s when you got home from work (as we all worked crazy hours), have a few chuckles and go to bed.

Maybe the next day you'd talk about different parts around the water cooler or maybe not. It was like pizza - never as good the next day so after one or two so I never recorded it (although, to be fair, I did buy a few DVDs when they came out of what I remembered as the best episodes - "Mitchell" being a big one).

What made it special was Joel, Mike and Dr. Forester and it went down hill at the end (Pearl, I'm talking to you). The reboots were terrible as they didn't have the same cast and the fact you could stream them any time rather than only having one coming out a week at a specific time ruined the fun.

MST3K was a product of it's time and the broadcast technology available - it doesn't work the same way now.

Comment Re:Celebrate the Win, Don't Dis the Approach (Score 1) 82

You're right but there's a huge caveat that currently bio-fuel requires quite a bit of energy to process the biomass into SAF (Synthetic Alternative Fuel) and that energy is often produced by burning something.

So the carbon in the SAF is being taken out of the atmosphere, but often additional carbon is used to make the fuel so it's really not carbon neutral.

Hopefully in a few years there will be sufficient renewable energy available and more efficient processes to make SAF truly carbon neutral.

Comment I wonder why nobody didn't think of this before. (Score 1) 82

I guess you don't realize that this has been an area of study since the 1950s.

The search for an appropriate biomass feedstock (ie plankton, bacteria as well as plants) has been going on for literally decades and for about the last fifteen years the effort has included trying to genetically engineer different species to make the process more cost efficient. The ideal is a lifeform that produces raw fuel as a byproduct, minimizing the need for processing.

Bio fuels are currently about 4x the price of fossil fuels so there's still a lot of room for improvement.

Comment Celebrate the Win, Don't Dis the Approach (Score 1) 82

Right now there are three major contenders for zero emission flight:
- Electric
- Fuel Cell/Hydrogen
- Synthetic Fuels

Each one has its advantages and disadvantages and are at least a couple of major innovations away from being commercially viable. The first two need very high output motors with very high efficiency (which is the primary reason why Rolls Royce is doing this; they're looking to sell motors in the future). Regardless, it's much to early to tell which of these technologies will be the most successful and be the market leader.

Personally, I'm much more excited about what Harbour Air along with magiX and H55 are doing to actually implement commercially viable solutions but this is another important step towards a cleaner future.

Comment Made by Pak Protectors? (Score 1) 50

For some reason, TFA reminds me of Larry Niven's "Ringworld" which was built by Pak Protectors who were able to transmute the mass of a gas giant like Jupiter into scrith and created the structure around the star.

But that's what makes 'Oumuamua so fascinating, he [Siraj] added. "I don't really care what it is, because every single possibility is an astrophysical object we've never seen before, so that's why it's exciting."

So if you're middle aged and see something that looks like a tree root that smells wonderful, don't eat it.

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