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Submission + - Can you picture things in your mind? (theguardian.com)

Submitted by whoever57
whoever57 writes: The Guardian has an interesting article on aphantasia, which is the inability to picture objects in your mind. People with this condition tend to go into STEM fields and remember different aspects of objects and people. Personally, I never realized before reading this article that people could create mental images.

Try the red apple test.

Submission + - A former senior Boeing employee on why he still won't fly on a MAX plane. (politico.com)

Submitted by berghem
berghem writes: ‘I’m Not Trying to Cause a Scene. I Just Want to Get Off This Plane.’

on this interview on Politico, Ed Pierson details the concerns about Boeing and in particular about its MAX aircraft which led him to take early retirement from the firm.

from the interview:

"Last year, I was flying from Seattle to New York, and I purposely scheduled myself on a non-MAX airplane. I went to the gate. I walked in, sat down and looked straight ahead, and lo and behold, there was a 737-8/737-9 safety card. So I got up and I walked off. The flight attendant didn’t want me to get off the plane. And I’m not trying to cause a scene. I just want to get off this plane, and I just don’t think it’s safe. I said I purposely scheduled myself not to fly [on a MAX]."

“The Boeing Company is capable of building quality airplanes,” says Pierson, now the executive director for the nonprofit Foundation for Aviation Safety. “The problem is leadership, or lack thereof, and the pressure to get airplanes out the door is greater than doing the job right.”

"I have always had the greatest respect for the airplane products that The Boeing Company makes. My family was involved in it and my relatives. I had no reason ever to doubt it. And then I started working in the factory. I had been around airplanes my whole career. I flew airplanes in the Navy. You go into the production environment, and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I had no idea it was this complex.” It’s stunning how complex it is. At first, I didn’t understand how all that came together. And it gave me a great respect for the people that were building the plane — it’s incredibly impressive to see. And then everything started to change in 2017 and into 2018."

"What’s going wrong is that nothing changed. They made very superficial changes that they made a big deal of. They made a giant deal of hiring a safety officer. Big whoop. They wanted to deflect attention away."

"That’s all Boeing does is talk. The leadership doesn’t get down there and get involved with the people that are building the products. They don’t value the engineers, they think the engineers are replaceable. You can’t take a 20- or 30-year employee and just dump them off to the side and think that you’re going to find somebody off the street that’s going to be able to do what that person does."

Comment Re:I was totally fine just having a remote (Score 1) 177

by Aviation Pete (#64267332) Attached to: How 'Smart Keys' Have Fueled a New Wave of Car Thefts

I was totally fine just having a physical key to unlock my vehicle. Stick the key in the door, turn it, and boom you're unlocked. Get in the car, stick the key into the ignition, turn it, and drive away...

In colder climates a frozen lock could easily give you five or even ten minutes of frustration. Remember door lock de-icers? They came in a range of types, and with remotes the need for them thankfully disappeared. I'm quite happy to have left physical keys behind.

Submission + - Data forensic expert got election rig claimers to frame themselves in court (politico.com) 1

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: [Mike] Lindell had given us about 50 gigabytes of additional data to plow through. There were four new files, but when I looked at them, they were essentially the same types as the first day’s files except with a spreadsheet containing 121,128 lines of generic information about internet service providers around the world plus their locations, their latitudes and longitudes, their IP addresses, and other miscellaneous information. I determined that nothing in the file was related to the 2020 presidential election, and wondered what my competitors were seeing.

Then came another giant batch of 509 files, comprising many more gigabytes. This was how Lindell planned to keep anyone from winning the [prove-us-wrong] challenge, I figured. Just inundate us with files and not nearly enough time to analyze them. That $5 million [prize] suddenly seemed to have slipped through my fingers in a way that felt very unfair...

On the third and final day of the [challenge] symposium, an idea hit me. I decided to scan the file modification dates for all of the latest files we’d been given and, lo and behold, most of the dates were August 2021, right before the symposium. In other words, the data were obviously modified right before we examined them. They could not possibly accurately represent data from the November 2020 election...

During the leadup to the hearing with the three-person arbitration panel, his witnesses gave conflicting answers to critical questions like “What exactly was in the data you provided to the experts and how was it related to the November 2020 U.S. presidential election?”...

“Mr. Zeidman,” the arbitrators stated, “proved the data Lindell LLC provided unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data.”...

Lindell filed an appeal of the decision...My lawyers and I will continue to fight him in court. When and if I see the money, I [Bob Zeidman] plan to donate to a nonprofit to legitimately support voter integrity laws and processes.

Comment Make no mistake ... (Score 1) 15

... this is the company behind the recent upset about the change in Unity licensing. They have invested heavily in Unity and now want their money back.

Did anyone believe that the licensing change was the sole brainchild of John Riccitiello? Of course he was instructed by Sequoia and pals to squeeze the developers and got dumped when he failed to get the message across. Unity is still on the same toxic track and will be as long as VC capital sees a chance for a payout.

As others have said, this is a PR move and a clumsy attempt to get at inside information. Very transparent.

Submission + - Leaked Emails Show Hugo Awards Self-Censoring to Appease China (404media.co) 1

Submitted by samleecole
samleecole writes: A trove of leaked emails shows how administrators of one of the most prestigious awards in science fiction censored themselves because the awards ceremony was being held in China.

The emails, which show the process of compiling spreadsheets of the top 10 works in each category and checking them for “sensitive political nature” to see if they were “an issue in China,” were obtained by fan writer Chris M. Barkley and author Jason Sanford, and published on fandom news site File 770 and Sanford’s Patreon, where they uploaded the full PDF of the emails. They were provided to them by Hugo Awards administrator Diane Lacey. Lacey confirmed in an email to 404 Media that she was the source of the emails.

“In addition to the regular technical review, as we are happening in China and the *laws* we operate under are different...we need to highlight anything of a sensitive political nature in the work,” Dave McCarty, head of the 2023 awards jury, directed administrators in an email. “It's not necessary to read everything, but if the work focuses on China, taiwan, tibet, or other topics that may be an issue *in* China...that needs to be highlighted so that we can determine if it is safe to put it on the ballot of if the law will require us to make an administrative decision about it.”

Submission + - Rogue UP address 1

Submitted by J. L. Tympanum
J. L. Tympanum writes: The following is strictly a theoretical question. I have no intention of doing any of it.

Suppose I set up a server. I set its IP address to be the same as some existing site. I connect my server to the internet. What happens?

Submission + - Slashdot Newsletter pop-ups (slashdot.org)

Submitted by ve3oat
ve3oat writes: OK, I get it. Slashdot has a newsletter to which I do not subscribe and you want me to subscribe to it.

But I am already a loyal Slashdot reader and I read Slashdot every day, usually several times a day, usually without logging in, and do not need a newsletter. Besides, my mailbox already gets stuffed with other things.

Please stop putting the pop-up ads for the Newsletter on my browser every time I visit Slashdot, which, as I mentioned above, is fairly often. Thank you.

Submission + - Appin's global censorship campaign to stop you from reading these docs (muckrock.com) 1

Submitted by v3rgEz
v3rgEz writes: Founded in 2003, Appin has been described as a cybersecurity company and an educational consulting firm. Appin was also, according to Reuters reporting and extensive marketing materials, a prolific “hacking for hire” service, stealing information from politicians and militaries as well as businesses and even unfaithful spouses.

Legal letters, being sent to newsrooms and organizations around the world, are trying to remove that story from the internet — and are often succeeding. Now, MuckRock, Techdirt and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are pushing back, helping to ensure the materials stays available. As Masnick at Techdirt notes, "This kind of censorial bullying may work on other publications, but Techdirt believes that (1) important stories, especially around surveillance and hacking, deserve to be read and (2) it’s vitally important to call it out publicly when operations like Appin seek to silence reporting, especially when it’s done through abusing the legal process to silence and intimidate journalists and news organizations."

Submission + - Paper Trail: Firms churning out fake papers now bribing journal editors (science.org)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “Rather than targeting potential authors and reviewers, someone who called himself Jack Ben, of a firm whose Chinese name translates to Olive Academic, was going for journal editors—offering large sums of cash to these gatekeepers in return for accepting papers for publication. . . . So cash-rich paper mills have evidently adopted a new tactic: bribing editors and planting their own agents on editorial boards to ensure publication of their manuscripts. An investigation by Science and Retraction Watch, in partnership with Wise and other industry experts, identified several paper mills and more than 30 editors of reputable journals who appear to be involved in this type of activity. Many were guest editors of special issues, which have been flagged in the past as particularly vulnerable to abuse because they are edited separately from the regular journal. But several were regular editors or members of journal editorial boards. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.”

Submission + - Encrypted Snapchat message led to panic response (bbc.co.uk) 2

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: A Spanish court has cleared a British man of public disorder, after he joked to friends about blowing up a flight from London Gatwick to Menorca.

Aditya Verma admitted he told friends in July 2022: "On my way to blow up the plane. I'm a member of the Taliban."

But he said he had made the joke in a private Snapchat group and never intended to "cause public distress"....

A key question in the case was how the message got out, considering Snapchat is an encrypted app.

One theory, raised in the trial, was that it could have been intercepted via Gatwick's Wi-Fi network. But a spokesperson for the airport told BBC News that its network "does not have that capability".

In the judge's resolution, cited by the Europa Press news agency, it was said that the message, "for unknown reasons, was captured by the security mechanisms of England when the plane was flying over French airspace".

The message was made "in a strictly private environment between the accused and his friends with whom he flew, through a private group to which only they have access, so the accused could not even remotely assume... that the joke he played on his friends could be intercepted or detected by the British services, nor by third parties other than his friends who received the message," the judgement added.'

So does the UK's GCHQ have a hack into Snapchat? Or how else did it get to the security services?

Submission + - NASA announces end of history-making Mars helicopter mission (reuters.com)

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: Reuters is reporting that NASA said on Thursday (Jan 25, 2024) that its miniature robot helicopter Ingenuity, which in 2021 became the first aircraft to achieve powered flight on another planet, can no longer fly, ending a mission on Mars that lasted far longer than originally planned.

"It is bittersweet that I must announce that Ingenuity, the 'little helicopter that could' — and it kept saying, 'I think I can, I think I can' — well, it has now taken its last flight on Mars," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a video posted on social media.

The U.S. space agency said Ingenuity made an "emergency landing" during its second-to-last flight. During its last flight, the craft on Jan. 18 lost contact with Perseverance, the rover from which Ingenuity deployed in 2021, when it was flying about 3 feet (1 meter) above the ground while descending to land, NASA added.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory restored contact with Ingenuity the next day, and imagery taken days later showed damage to one of its carbon fiber rotorblades, the space agency said. An image released by NASA that was taken by Ingenuity's onboard camera captured the aircraft's shadow on the Martian surface, appearing to show one of its rotorblades broken.

"We're investigating the possibility that the blade struck the ground," Nelson said.

Perseverance, which carried Ingenuity on its belly, landed on the Martian surface in February 2021.

Submission + - Hugo awards censored in China (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Bruce66423
Bruce66423 writes: Certain of those who had gained enough votes to be nominated were excluded for no apparent reason from the final ballot. Victims include Neil Gaiman

Submission + - Inside a Global Phone Spy Tool Monitoring Billions 1

Submitted by FrankOVD
FrankOVD writes: An investigation by 404 media reveals a secretive spy tool that can track about 5 billions of phones through ads. The investigation let to Google taking action against an ad firm linked to the main culprit : Patternz. 404 media found marketing materials and videos, did technical forensics analysis and used research from privacy activists to show how advertisements on many ordinary mobiles apps suck as 9Gag, Kik, and a series of call ID apps can feed a mass monitoring tool advertiset to national security agencies to "track physical location, hobbies, and familly members of people".

“The pervasive surveillance machine that has been developed for digital advertising now directly enables government mass surveillance. Many businesses, from app publishers to advertisers to big tech, are acting completely irresponsibly. This must end,” Wolfie Christl, the principal of Cracked Labs, an Austrian research institute and co-author of a paper published last year that researched the surveillance tool, told 404 Media.

Although it is far from the only company involved, Nuviad, an Israeli company who's CEO is also the CEO of Patternz, has been cut off from Google's and Microsoft's platforms : "When asked for comment on Google cutting his company off, Nuviad’s Schwartz emailed 404 Media “Bravo!!! You just kill a company.”

“The impact is simple—Nuviad is dead,” he added."

Submission + - Pastor charged with worthless crypto scam (lawandcrime.com)

Submitted by smooth wombat
smooth wombat writes: Authorities have brought charges against a Colorado pastor and his wife who ran a $3 million crypto scam. The two face civil charges over the $1 million of investor money they squandered on home renovations, child care, luxury vehicles, makeup, snowmobile trips, and more by offering a worthless product.

The Regalados created a cryptocurrency targeting Christians known as “INDXcoin” over a year ago, prosecutors said. The Colorado attorney general said in an announcement late last week that the state’s securities division found that from June 2022 to April 2023, INDXcoin generated almost $3.2 million from roughly 300 investors for its bunk product.

In his videos promoting the digital currency, Eli Regalado, having no background in crypto whatsoever, “took advantage of the trust and faith of his own Christian community” by claiming it was easy for his followers to become wealthy by putting their funds into INDX and letting him and the lord take it from there, prosecutors allege.

Insterestingly, Regalado has said the charges are true.

“I was asking the lord what he wanted me to say and he said, just let me speak through you. Let me come out first and foremost by saying that Kaitlin and I are being charged in a civil charge from Colorado SEC for basically selling millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency that is deemed worthless by the state,” he said. “Now the reason they are saying it’s worthless is because there is no exit for people who have bought — everyone who is watching this who has put money into this who wanted to take money out, you’ve been unable to do that. We launched an exchange, the exchange technology failed, things went downhill and from that point forward, we’ve just been waiting on the lord, literally for a miracle.”

In the roughly 10-minute long video, Regalado stresses that of the more than $3 million prosecutors claims he swindled, $1.3 million was “taken out of $3.4 million but out of that $1.3 million, half a million went to the IRS and a few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel the that the lord told us to do.”

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