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Submission + - As Brazil's wetlands burned, government did little to help (ntoch.com)

Submitted by Ntoch
Ntoch writes: After hours navigating Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands in search of jaguars earlier this month, Daniel Moura beached his boat to survey the fire damage. In every direction, he saw only devastation. No wildlife, and no support from federal authorities.

“We used to see jaguars here all the time; I once saw 16 jaguars in a single day,” Moura, a guide who owns an eco-tourism outfit, said on the riverbank in the Encontro das Aguas state park, which this year saw 84% of its vegetation destroyed.

“Where are all those animals now?”

The world’s largest tropical wetlands, the Pantanal is popular for viewing the furtive felines, along with caiman, capybara and more. This year it is exceptionally dry and burning at a record rate. The fires have been so intense that at one point smoke reached Sao Paulo, 900 miles away.

Submission + - SPAM: New RISC-V CPU claims recordbreaking performance per watt

Submitted by Hmmmmmm
Hmmmmmm writes: Micro Magic adviser Andy Huang claimed the CPU could produce 13,000 CoreMarks (more on that later) at 5GHz and 1.1V while also putting out 11,000 CoreMarks at 4.25GHz—the latter all while consuming only 200mW. Huang demonstrated the CPU—running on an Odroid board—to EE Times at 4.327GHz/0.8V and 5.19GHz/1.1V.

Later the same week, Micro Magic announced the same CPU could produce over 8,000 CoreMarks at 3GHz while consuming only 69mW of power.

Part of the difficulty in evaluating Micro Magic's claim for its new CPU lies in figuring out just what a CoreMark is and how many of them are needed to make a fast CPU. It's a deliberately simplified CPU benchmarking tool released by the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, intended to be as platform-neutral and simple to build and use as possible. CoreMark focuses solely on the core pipeline functions of a CPU, including basic read/write, integer, and control operations. This specifically avoids most effects of system differences in memory, I/O, and so forth.

With that said, it's worth pointing out that—if we take Micro Magic's numbers for granted—they're already beating the performance of some solid mobile phone CPUs. Even at its efficiency-first 3GHz clockrate, the Micro Magic CPU outperformed a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. The Snapdragon 820 isn't world-class anymore, but it's no slouch, either—it was the processor in the US version of Samsung's Galaxy S7.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - The Real Fascist Threat Was Never Trump—It's Corporate Power (thedailybeast.com) 1

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: We cannot hope to have a functional democracy when property and information are controlled by a small number of companies tightly allied with political power.

Under the kindly eyes of Uncle Joe, we soon may find ourselves living under an updated version of the fascist “corporate state”— an alliance between political leaders and a handful of ultra-rich, ultra-powerful companies that increasingly dominate the economy and culture. This new American-style corporate state reflects not a conspiracy but the politics of a society with unprecedented concentrations of wealth and power.

These firms, based largely in the tech industry, have benefited massively from the lockdowns and now account for nearly 40 percent of the value of the Standard and Poor index, a level of concentration unprecedented in modern history, As the giants get even more gigantic, up to 30 percent of America’s small businesses face bankruptcy and the ranks of the poor have grown by 8 million.

Not surprisingly the new regime will likely favor controls on information that fit their own interests and inclinations. Despite suggestions to the contrary by the New York Times , history suggests any meaningful effort to rein in the oligarchs is now dead on arrival. There will be little restraint as platforms like Facebook and Google accelerate their attempts to “curate” (read: control) news—or in Amazon’s case, remove books or videos—to minimize or exclude those who violate their world-view.

What we see now is something of an American version of the Chinese system of power concentration and control—the leading fascist model of today. In America this will be achieved not through government but by allowing a handful of private companies to control information. Indeed Richard Stengel, head of the Biden transition team for media, has openly advocated controls on “hate speech,” a conveniently vague term. Such an approach is widely supported by organizations like the German Marshall Fund as well as prominent “liberal” legal scholars who openly praise China’s censorious approach.

Submission + - To explain away dark matter, gravity would have to be really weird (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Dark matter, the invisible stuff whose gravity is thought to hold galaxies together, may be the least satisfying concept in physics. But if you want to get rid of it, a new study finds, you’ll need to replace it with something even more bizarre: a force of gravity that, at some distances, pulls massive objects together and, at other distances, pushes them apart. The analysis underscores how hard it is to explain away dark matter.

Concocting such a theory of gravity “is so complicated that it seems very unlikely that anyone could come up with a scenario that would work,” says Scott Dodelson, a theoretical physicist at Carnegie Mellon University, who wasn’t involved in the new work. Still, some theorists say it may be possible to pass the test.

Submission + - Developing Wayland Color Management and High Dynamic Range (collabora.com)

Submitted by mfilion
mfilion writes: Wayland (the protocol and architecture) is still lacking proper consideration for color management & support for high dynamic range (HDR) imagery, which has been around in movie and broadcasting industry for a while now (e.g. Netflix HDR UI). However, a group of renegade devs has begun an effort to fix this situation. This is their story.

Submission + - How a fake persona laid the groundwork for a Hunter Biden conspiracy deluge (nbcnews.com) 2

Submitted by ArchieBunker
ArchieBunker writes: One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake "intelligence" document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China.

The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake "intelligence firm" called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.

Submission + - Investors Scramble for Entry into Ant Financials' Mega IPO (scmp.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: Investors, both big and small, are defying the threats of sanctions by populistic US politicians and anxiously waiting on Thursday to find out whether they would be one of the lucky ones to win a golden ticket for a slice of Jack Ma’s Ant Group, the fast-growing digital finance platform, in the biggest initial public offering in history which will debut equally in Hong Kong and Shanghai raising $34 billion combined, surpassing previous IPO records of Saudi Aramco at $29 billion and Ant's parent Alibaba Group at $25 billion. The retail tranche in Hong Kong was more than 90 times oversubscribed as of Thursday morning. Ant’s IPO values the company at US$313 billion, which could rise to US$318.50 billion including an overallotment option, making the fintech unicorn more valuable than the world’s biggest bank, JPMorgan Chase. When thousands of retail investors could first subscribe to the Ant shares, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) the city’s de facto central bank had intervened twice by selling a combined HK$31.8 billion to curb shortages of the Hong Kong Dollar. Speaking at a business conference in Shanghai last week, Ma touted the fact that the pricing for Ant's IPO was "determined outside of New York City," underscoring China's growing clout in finance and tech. "We didn't dare to think about it five years ago, or even three years ago," Ma said, calling it "a miracle" that such a huge IPO can now take place in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Submission + - OpenBSD 6.8 released (openbsd.org)

Submitted by xhonza
xhonza writes: 25th anniversary of a Theo de Raadt's fork of NetBSD and begining of OpenBSD project.

Submission + - Healthcare Giant UHS Hit By Ransomware Attack, Sources Say (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Universal Health Services, one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S., has been hit by a ransomware attack. The attack hit UHS systems early on Sunday morning, according to two people with direct knowledge of the incident, locking computers and phone systems at several UHS facilities across the country, including in California and Florida. One of the people said the computer screens changed with text that referenced the “shadow universe,” consistent with the Ryuk ransomware. “Everyone was told to turn off all the computers and not to turn them on again,” the person said. “We were told it will be days before the computers are up again.”

It’s not immediately known what impact the ransomware attack is having on patient care, or how widespread the issue is. UHS published a statement on Monday, saying its IT network “is currently offline, due to an IT security issue.” "We implement extensive IT security protocols and are working diligently with our IT security partners to restore IT operations as quickly as possible. In the meantime, our facilities are using their established back-up processes including offline documentation methods. Patient care continues to be delivered safely and effectively,” the statement said. “No patient or employee data appears to have been accessed, copied or otherwise compromised,” it added.

Submission + - Slashdot Cowardly Disables Anonymous Coward (slashdot.org) 8

Submitted by dark.nebulae
dark.nebulae writes: Apparently Slashdot has disabled Anonymous Coward postings, but they have been cowards about it by not informing anyone about it.

Perhaps one of the Slashdot Editors can grow a backbone and actually tell us wtf is going on...

Submission + - SPAM: Silicon Valley's Psychopath Problem 2

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — the universally accepted diagnostic tool used to assess this disorder — a psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy.

These attributes aren’t just present “but celebrated in Silicon Valley,” says Gavet, who once held the position of executive vice-president of global operations for Priceline Group, among other roles.

Research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. In fact, Silicon Valley’s psychopathic traits “trickle down through entire organizations,” says Gavet. “In effect creating psychopathic companies.”

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann is being probed by the New York state attorney general over allegations of self-dealing.NY Post composite/Mike Guillen
This is enabled by an “infantilized culture” at many start-up companies, where employees become accustomed to working in “hyper-privileged bubbles where their every whim is catered to and every need anticipated,” she writes.

The patron saint of Big Tech douches, the one who inspired an entire generation of start-up entrepreneurs to put their worst face forward, was late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs. He disliked wearing shoes (or showering), preferred parking in handicapped parking spots and once motivated employees by calling them “f–king d–kless assholes.”

“His legacy has cultivated an indelible association between being a jerk and a genius,” writes Gavet. “Which has ballooned to the point where many people believe that a founder-CEO, in particular, actually has to be a jerk to be a genius.”

She calls it the Steve Jobs Syndrome, and she’s witnessed both powerful and up-and-coming tech exes believing in the myth like it’s doctrine. Theranos CEO Holmes ruthlessly copied Jobs — not just by wearing black turtlenecks — but also by following his example of persuading people “to believe he was a prophet even when he was wrong,” Gavet writes.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - Securing a Linux Web Server: A Primer (linuxsecurity.com)

Submitted by b-dayyy
b-dayyy writes: Over the next couple of weeks and months, LinuxSecurity editors and contributors will be writing a series on Linux Web Server Security. This week, we’re summarizing the risks Linux administrators face when trying to secure their systems, as well as outlining the first steps that should be taken toward ensuring that your systems are secure. This series will dive deeper into topics including preventing information leakage, firewall considerations, protecting file and directory permissions, securely running PHP applications, monitoring logs and how to verify the security of a Linux server.

Much of this information originated from the Linux Security HOWTO, a comprehensive resource written by LinuxSecurity.com Founder Dave Wreski more than twenty years ago to offer the Linux community a place to start with securing their systems before much of the existing open source security documentation was created, now updated to reflect modern security principles and practices.

Submission + - Mozilla WebThings IoT platform spun out as an independent open source project (mozilla.org)

Submitted by tola
tola writes: Following a round of layoffs at Mozilla, their WebThings IoT platform (https://iot.mozilla.org) is being spun out as an independent open source project by former employees, with a new commercial sponsor.

WebThings is an open platform for monitoring and controlling devices over the web, built on W3C Web of Things standards. It includes WebThings Gateway which is a software distribution for smart home gateways focused on privacy, security and interoperability and the WebThings Framework which is a collection of re-usable software components to help developers build their own web things.

The project will be renamed from "Mozilla WebThings" to "WebThings" and will move to a new home at https://webthings.io/ Users will be able to opt-in to receive software updates from the new community run update servers and be offered the opportunity to transition to a replacement remote tunnelling service before Mozilla servers are shut down at the end of the year.

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