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Comment WASP "Power" ends... US v. U$. (Score 0) 96

Governance by billionaires, kings, pharaohs... via their perfidious pelf satraps, plutocrats, aristocrats... creates iniquitous inequality on earth, as in space. Wealth Accumulation Society Peerage (WASP) exclusivity causes the destruction of cultures and people.

Governance by US/People [Isocracy] create peace, wealth, communities, schools, art, roads... and end slavery, oppression, wars, iniquitous inequality... by egalitarian and efficacious sharing resources [wealth] created by all of US, EU... and defending against WASP oligarchs, plutocrats.... Maybe one day WASP will be extinct and out of Space.

Personal WASP phantasy "Power" is defined by agitprop history, peerage politics, and iniquitous inequality. WASP kings, satraps, billionaires... exploit hate, hunger, fear... and take credit for all successes by others and blame other people for all failures, disasters, problems, wars....

U$ governance assures space is a profitable wasteful failure for humanity.
Hardware

Edmund Clarke, 2007 Winner of the Turing Award, Dies of Covid-19 (post-gazette.com) 65

Posted by EditorDavid from the sad-news dept.
"Edmund M. Clarke, the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science Emeritus at Carnegie Mellon University, has died of Covid-19," writes Slashdot reader McGruber.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Professor Clarke was best known for his work in model checking, an automated method for detecting design errors in computer hardware and software. CMU president Farnam Jahanian said the world had "lost a giant in computer science" with Mr. Clarke's death. "Ed's pioneering work in model checking applied formal computational methods to the ultimate challenge: computers checking their own correctness," Mr. Jahanian said in a statement. "As systems become ever more complex, we are just beginning to see the wide-reaching and long-term benefits of Ed's insights, which will continue to inspire researchers and practitioners for years to come."

In the early 1980s, Mr. Clarke and his Harvard University graduate student, E. Allen Emerson — as well as Joseph Sifakis of the University of Grenoble, who was working separately — developed model checking, which has helped to improve the reliability of complex computer chips, systems and networks. For their work, the Association for Computing Machinery gave the three scientists the prestigious A.M. Turing Award — computer science's Nobel Prize — in 2007.

Mr. Clark's citation on the Turing Award website said Microsoft and Intel and other companies use model checking to verify designs for computer networks and software. "It is becoming particularly important in the verification of software designed for recent generations of integrated circuits, which feature multiple processors running simultaneously," the citation page said. "Model checking has substantially improved the reliability and safety of the systems upon which modern life depends."
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Edward Snowden Urges Donations to the EFF (eff.org) 99

Posted by EditorDavid from the naughty-or-nice dept.
In October, Edward Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia. A new web page by the EFF applauds his past activities as a U.S. whistleblower. "His revelations about secret surveillance programs opened the world's eyes to a new level of government misconduct, and reinvigorated EFF's continuing work in the courts and with lawmakers to end unlawful mass spying."

And then they shared this fund-raising pitch written by Edward Snowden: Seven years ago I did something that would change my life and alter the world's relationship to surveillance forever.

When journalists revealed the truth about state deception and illegal conduct against citizens, it was human rights and civil liberties groups like EFF — backed by people around the world just like you — that seized the opportunity to hold authority to account.

Surveillance quiets resistance and takes away our choices. It robs us of private space, eroding our dignity and the things that make us human.

When you're secure from the spectre of judgement, you have room to think, to feel, and to make mistakes as your authentic self. That's where you test your notions of what's right. That's when you question the things that are wrong.

By sounding the alarm and shining a light on mass surveillance, we force governments around the world to confront their wrongdoing.

Slowly, but surely, grassroots work is changing the future. Laws like the USA Freedom Act have just begun to rein in excesses of government surveillance. Network operators and engineers are triumphantly "encrypting all the things" to harden the Internet against spying. Policymakers began holding digital privacy up to the light of human rights law. And we're all beginning to understand the power of our voices online.

This is how we can fix a broken system. But it only works with your help.

For 30 years, EFF members have joined forces to ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people. It takes unique expertise in the courts, with policymakers, and on technology to fight digital authoritarianism, and thankfully EFF brings all of those skills to the fight. EFF relies on participation from you to keep pushing the digital rights movement forward .

Each of us plays a crucial role in advancing democracy for ourselves, our neighbors, and our children. I hope you'll answer the call by joining EFF to build a better digital future together.

Sincerely,

Edward Snowden
Space

An Asteroid the Size of a Dwarf Planet Is Lurking In Our Solar System (livescience.com) 38

Posted by EditorDavid from the space-invaders dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot summarizes an article from LiveScience: There's a giant asteroid somewhere out in the solar system, and it hurled a big rock at Earth.

The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008. NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt — that formed in the presence of water under intermediate temperatures and pressures.

The mineral makeup of these space rocks offers clues about the "parent asteroid" that birthed a given meteor, researchers said in a statement.
Medicine

The Secret to Longevity? 4-Minute Bursts of Intense Exercise May Help (msn.com) 82

Posted by EditorDavid from the HIIT-parade dept.
The New York Times reports on results from a rigorous five-year study in Trondheim, Norway that raises the question: If you increase your heart rate, will your life span follow? The study, one of the largest and longest-term experimental examinations to date of exercise and mortality, shows that older men and women who exercise in almost any fashion are relatively unlikely to die prematurely. But if some of that exercise is intense, the study also finds, the risk of early mortality declines even more, and the quality of people's lives climbs...

Their first step was to invite every septuagenarian in Trondheim to participate... More than 1,500 of the Norwegian men and women accepted... All agreed to start and continue to exercise more regularly during the upcoming five years... The first group, as a control, agreed to follow standard activity guidelines and walk or otherwise remain in motion for half an hour most days. (The scientists did not feel they could ethically ask their control group to be sedentary for five years.) Another group began exercising moderately for longer sessions of 50 minutes twice a week. And the third group started a program of twice-weekly high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, during which they cycled or jogged at a strenuous pace for four minutes, followed by four minutes of rest, with that sequence repeated four times... During that time, the scientists noted that quite a few of the participants in the control had dabbled with interval-training classes at local gyms, on their own initiative and apparently for fun...

After five years, the researchers checked death registries and found that about 4.6 per cent of all of the original volunteers had passed away during the study, a lower number than in the wider Norwegian population of 70-year-olds, indicating these active older people were, on the whole, living longer than others of their age. But they also found interesting, if slight, distinctions between the groups. The men and women in the high-intensity-intervals group were about 2 per cent less likely to have died than those in the control group, and 3 per cent less likely to die than anyone in the longer, moderate-exercise group. People in the moderate group were, in fact, more likely to have passed away than people in the control group.

The men and women in the interval group also were more fit now and reported greater gains in their quality of life than the other volunteers....

Dorthe Stensvold, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology who led the new study, believes the study's message can be broadly applicable to almost all of us.. "Adding life to years, not only years to life, is an important aspect of healthy ageing, and the higher fitness and health-related quality of life from high-intensity interval training in this study is an important finding."
Medicine

Many Formerly-Skeptical Americans are Now Eager to Get Covid-19 Vaccines (deccanherald.com) 247

Posted by EditorDavid from the giving-it-a-shot dept.
The New York Times reports: Ever since the race to develop a coronavirus vaccine began last spring, upbeat announcements were stalked by ominous polls: No matter how encouraging the news, growing numbers of people said they would refuse to get the shot... But over the past few weeks, as the vaccine went from a hypothetical to a reality, something happened. Fresh surveys show attitudes shifting and a clear majority of Americans now eager to get vaccinated. In polls by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center, the portion of people saying they are now likely or certain to take the vaccine has grown from about 50 per cent this summer to more than 60 per cent, and in one poll 73 per cent — a figure that approaches what some public health experts say would be sufficient for herd immunity...

[T]he attitude improvement is striking. A similar shift on another heated pandemic issue was reflected in a different Kaiser poll this month. It found that nearly 75 per cent of Americans are now wearing masks when they leave their homes.

The change reflects a constellation of recent events: the uncoupling of the vaccine from Election Day; clinical trial results showing about 95 per cent efficacy and relatively modest side effects for the vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna; and the alarming surge in new coronavirus infections and deaths... The lure of the vaccines' modest quantities also can't be underestimated as a driver of desire, somewhat like the must-have frenzy generated by a limited-edition Christmas gift, according to public opinion experts... A barrage of feel-good media coverage, including rapt attention given to leading scientists and politicians when they get jabbed and joyous scrums surrounding local health care workers who become the first to be vaccinated, has amplified the excitement, public opinion experts say.

Submission + - Asteroid the size of a dwarf planet is lurking in our solar system (livescience.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: There's a giant asteroid somewhere out in the solar system, and it hurled a big rock at Earth. The evidence for this mystery space rock comes from a diamond-studded meteor that exploded over Sudan in 2008.

NASA had spotted the 9-ton (8,200 kilograms), 13-foot (4 meters) meteor heading toward the planet well before impact, and researchers showed up in the Sudanese desert to collect an unusually rich haul of remains. Now, a new study of one of those meteorites suggests that the meteor may have broken off of a giant asteroid — one more or less the size of the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt — that formed in the presence of water under intermediate temperatures and pressures.

The mineral makeup of these space rocks offers clues about the "parent asteroid" that birthed a given meteor, researchers said in a statement.

Comment Toxic Air, Water, Land, Products... Are Good? (Score 1) 138

by OldHawk777 (#60861700) Attached to: Microplastics Revealed in the Placentas of Unborn Babies

Milton Friedman Preached Profitable Prosperity Economics and proselytized Politicians, Economists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Nations... To A Dogma Of "Greed Is Good." Free Market Manifesto and #AllOfUS. http://www.umich.edu/~thecore/...
https://nytimes.com/2020/09/11...

Personal Phantasy and Wealth Accumulation define power, myth, dogma, history.... All of human history [China, Greece, Egypt, Rome, Germany, Japan... Christians, Muslims... USA, USSR, EU...], "POWER" is defined by agitprop history, peerage politics, and iniquitous inequality. "POWER" will end humanity or "HUMANITY" will end power. https://tobiasrevell.com/A-Bri...

PHANTASY: Wealth Accumulation Society Peerage (WASP) indentured cavalier satrap politicians and clergy assure the supercilious and perfidious 18th-to-20th century Equestrian Economics (EE) govern and conserve "POWER" into the 21st Century. WASP-EE power now defines seraphic-rights of sovereigns' lineage and legacy, intellect, privilege, integrity, sanity, probity, history... by a primeval zeitgeist. WASP prosperity dogma is canonized into domestic and international laws, treaties, ethics, economics, governance.... https://sxpolitics.org/wp-cont...
https://socialhistoryportal.or...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/...
https://www.bloomberg.com/feat...

Gilded Age Robber Barons Jason Gould (1836–1892) a railroad magnate and financial speculator [Wealthy Elite]; said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." U$ €U ¥ U... Billionaires think the same way today about humanity.

USA Fare Economics Fails U$A Iniquitous Inequality [AKA: Greed, Avarice, Cupidity...].
U$A Greed, Avarice, Cupidity... Economics Fails The USA and All US People.
USA Our Retirements?
U$A Recessions GDP drops +1%?
USA Our Jobs?
U$A Great Recessions GDP drops +5%?
USA Our Homes?
U$A Great Depressions GDP drops +10%?
USA Our Future?
U$A Great Desperations GDP drops +20%?
USA Constituents Accumulate Less Income, Services, Annuities, Safeguards...?
U$A Constituents Accumulate More Wealth, Privileges, Entitlements, Welfare...?

Submission + - DHS Is Looking Into Backdoors in Smart TVs by China's TCL 2

Submitted by chicksdaddy
chicksdaddy writes: The acting head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the agency was assessing the cyber risk of smart TVs sold by the Chinese electronics giant TCL, following reports last month in The Security Ledger and elsewhere that the devices may give the company “back door” access to deployed sets, The Security Ledger reports. (https://securityledger.com/2020/12/dhs-looking-into-cyber-risk-from-tcl-smart-tvs/)

Speaking at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said that DHS is “reviewing entities such as the Chinese manufacturer TCL.” (https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/12/21/acting-secretary-chad-f-wolf-remarks-prepared-homeland-security-and-china-challenge)

“This year it was discovered that TCL incorporated backdoors into all of its TV sets exposing users to cyber breaches and data exfiltration. TCL also receives CCP state support to compete in the global electronics market, which has propelled it to the third largest television manufacturer in the world,” Wolf said, according to a version of prepared remarks published by DHS. His talk was entitled “Homeland Security and the China Challenge.”

As reported last month (https://securityledger.com/2020/11/security-holes-opened-back-door-to-tcl-android-smart-tvs/), independent researchers John Jackson, (@johnjhacking) -an application security engineer for Shutter Stock – and a researcher using the handle Sick Codes (@sickcodes) identified and described two serious software security holes affecting TCL brand television sets and would allow an unprivileged remote attacker on the adjacent network to download most system files from the TV set up to and including images, personal data and security tokens for connected applications. The flaw could lead to serious critical information disclosure, the researchers warned.

Both flaws affect TCL Android Smart TV series V8-R851T02-LF1 V295 and below and V8-T658T01-LF1 V373 and below, according to the official CVE reports. In an interview with The Security Ledger, the researcher Sick Codes said that a TCL TV set he was monitoring was patched for the CVE-2020-27403 vulnerability without any notice from the company and no visible notification on the device itself.

In a statement to The Security Ledger, TCL disputed that account. (https://securityledger.com/2020/11/tv-maker-tcl-denies-back-door-promises-better-process/) By TCL’s account, the patched vulnerability was linked to a feature called “Magic Connect” and an Android APK by the name of T-Cast, which allows users to “stream user content from a mobile device.” T-Cast was never installed on televisions distributed in the USA or Canada, TCL said. For TCL smart TV sets outside of North America that did contain T-Cast, the APK was “updated to resolve this issue,” the company said. That application update may explain why the TCL TV set studied by the researchers suddenly stopped exhibiting the vulnerability.

In his address on Monday, Acting Secretary Wolf said the warning about TCL will be part of a broader “business advisory” cautioning against using data services and equipment from firms linked to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

This advisory will highlight “numerous examples of the PRC government leveraging PRC institutions like businesses, organizations, and citizens to covertly access and obtain the sensitive data of businesses to advance its economic and national security goals,” Wolf said.

“DHS flags instances where Chinese companies illicitly collect data on American consumers or steal intellectual property. CCP-aligned firms rake in tremendous profits as a result,” he said.

Comment "Power" always ends people, civilizations.... (Score 1) 2

by OldHawk777 (#60857128) Attached to: Aphorisms on "POWER" ain't simple. RFC on "POWER."

Gilded Age Robber Barons Jason Gould (1836–1892) a railroad magnate and financial speculator [Wealthy Elite]; said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." U$ €U ¥ U... Billionaires think the same way today about humanity.

USA Fare Economics Fails U$A Iniquitous Inequality [AKA: Greed, Avarice, Cupidity...].
U$A Greed, Avarice, Cupidity... Economics Fails The USA and All US People.
USA Our Retirements?
U$A Recessions GDP drops +1%?
USA Our Jobs?
U$A Great Recessions GDP drops +5%?
USA Our Homes?
U$A Great Depressions GDP drops +10%?
USA Our Future?
U$A Great Desperations GDP drops +20%?
USA Constituents Accumulate Less Income, Services, Annuities, Safeguard...?
U$A Constituents Accumulate More Wealth, Privileges, Entitlements, Welfare...?

Milton Friedman Preached Profitable Prosperity Economics and proselytized Politicians, Economists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Nations... To A Dogma Of "Greed Is Good." Free Market Manifesto and #AllOfUS.
https://nytimes.com/2020/09/11...
http://www.umich.edu/~thecore/...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Comment "Power" always ends people, civilizations.... (Score 1) 2

by OldHawk777 (#60857046) Attached to: Aphorisms on "POWER" ain't simple. RFC on "POWER."

Wealth Accumulation Society Peerage (WASP) indentured cavalier satrap politicians and clergy assure the supercilious and perfidious 18th-to-20th century Equestrian Economics (EE) govern and conserve "POWER" into the 21st Century.

WASP-EE power now defines seraphic-rights of sovereigns' lineage and legacy, intellect, privilege, integrity, sanity, probity, history... by a primeval zeitgeist. WASP prosperity dogma is canonized into domestic and international laws, treaties, ethics, economics, governance....

https://sxpolitics.org/wp-cont...

https://socialhistoryportal.or...
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/10/...
https://www.bloomberg.com/feat...

Submission + - SPAM: Aphorisms on "POWER" ain't simple. RFC on "POWER." 2

Submitted by OldHawk777
OldHawk777 writes: Personal Phantasy and Wealth Accumulation define power, myth, dogma, history....

IMO for all of human history [China, Greece, Egypt, Rome, Germany, Japan... Christians, Muslims... USA, USSR, EU...], "POWER" is defined by agitprop history, peerage politics, and iniquitous inequality.

Aphorism: "POWER" will end humanity or "HUMANITY" will end power.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - NVIDIA has probably screwed up again 2

Submitted by hvidstue
hvidstue writes: Both 'JayzTwoCents' and 'Linus Tech Tips', two very respectable review channels of primarily computer hardware, are using very strong language in describing how NVIDIA allegedly has turned to mafia methods in trying to control reviews from fellow reviewer Steven Walton, that runs the channel 'Hardware Unboxed'. Their titles are "NVIDIA... You've officially gone TOO far this time..." and "NVIDIA might ACTUALLY be EVIL...", respectively.

Jason states:
"...that they make a good product, but making a good product doesn't make you not a shit CEO and a shit company",
while Linus put it this way:
"This sends a message: 'You better make sure you get onboard with Nvidia's vision for the direction of the gaming industry, or else ...' " and "You'd have to be a complete fucking idiot to think this would not get immediately published".

Submission + - "Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News" from Scientific American (scientificamerican.com) 1

Submitted by doc1623
doc1623 writes: Obvious, but now we have the science

"Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told the information was false. The study is significant because it identifies what may be a major risk factor for vulnerability to fake news."

Also obvious, if you're in the middle of the ocean, you have a more significant chance of drowning than on dry land

"The results showed that the average truth rating increased from day to day for the repeated statements, but remained constant for the non-repeated statements, indicating that subjects mistook familiarity for verity."

Submission + - Drug Reverses Age-Related Mental Decline Within Days (ucsf.edu) 3

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Just a few doses of an experimental drug can reverse age-related declines in memory and mental flexibility in mice, according to a new study by UC San Francisco scientists. The drug, called ISRIB, has already been shown in laboratory studies to restore memory function months after traumatic brain injury (TBI), reverse cognitive impairments in Down Syndrome, prevent noise-related hearing loss, fight certain types of prostate cancer, and even enhance cognition in healthy animals.

In the new study, published Dec. 1, 2020, in the open-access journal eLife, researchers showed rapid restoration of youthful cognitive abilities in aged mice, accompanied by a rejuvenation of brain and immune cells that could help explain improvements in brain function.

“ISRIB’s extremely rapid effects show for the first time that a significant component of age-related cognitive losses may be caused by a kind of reversible physiological “blockage” rather than more permanent degradation,” said Susanna Rosi, PhD, Lewis and Ruth Cozen Chair II and professor in the departments of Neurological Surgery and of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science.

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