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Submission + - First successful test of an ion propulsion drone. (techevangeler.com)

Submitted by techevangeler
techevangeler writes: Florida: An American company has created a fanless ion propulsion drone that is completely silent and has flown for more than four minutes in its initial flight. a company called In Defined Technology has named it the 'Silent Vents' drone whose flight mechanism is very interesting. It has two tiers of rows in which rows of electrodes are placed.

Comment Re:Cloudiness (Score 4, Insightful) 91

No, it makes you a drug dealer. "The first hit is free, try it out, no strings attached, honest!".

The fact one even has to consider how to 'take their data with them' (export APIs) means there is a lock-in for non-technical users.

My phone's microSD card doesn't require a vendor-specific API. When it gets near to full, I either decide to pop it out and stick it in a drawer and label it for later use, replacing with a new one, or back it up to a local drive and wipe it to use again (which TBH has its own set of problems for non-tech users...)

Exporting and *actually using* Google drive data is well beyond the skills of most non-technical users, sadly. Blame Google, or the users; it doesn't matter. Data storage management is not easy but cloud/smartphone providers have intentionally made it even harder.

Comment Just kill it already (Score 1) 158

by ArghBlarg (#62351149) Attached to: Should JavaScript Add a New Syntax for Types?

Stick a fork in JS already, it's an abomination with so many bandaids on top it's silly.

Once upon a time, the SRC the <script> tag if I recall had a TYPE= attribute -- just *use* it to specify one of many languages so people can use what they want.

Make a standard plugin interface to compile the desired language to WebAssembly, freeze the DOM/HTML/plugin/CSS/blah blah standards and stop the insanity.

Better yet, as others have said, ditch this entirely and go back to CGI and minimal web browsers. Oh but that would kill the ad/tracking industry. Boo hoo.

Submission + - U.S. Congress grills Zuck over fake accounts inciting Canadian "Freedom Convoy" (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Minion of Eris
Minion of Eris writes: From the article:

"The questions include, how many fake accounts Facebook identified related to the "Freedom Convoy"; when it determined they were fake; how many people saw that content; what country it originated from; what countries it was spread in; and how much money Facebook made from associated ads.The letter expressed alarm over reports that Facebook had discovered that some groups promoting the convoys had been created by fake user profiles, which were set up in content farms in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Romania."

Submission + - Covid-19 infection can reactivate the latent retroviruses in human DNA (phys.org)

Submitted by He Who Has No Name
He Who Has No Name writes: In a synopsis posted Monday, John Hewitt at Phys.org points out some fairly unsettling implications of an ugly trick by Covid-19 (more formally, SARS-CoV-2) — it wakes up latent viruses that we are born with in our DNA.

A quick version for those not familiar with virology: retroviruses are a subclass of viruses that leave copies of their RNA in the host cell's DNA as part of their replication process, the reverse of the way most viruses replicate (that's where the 'retro' part comes from). Latent, inactive sequences of retroviral DNA make up more than 1% of the human genome. We're literally born with them in our genes.

Now back to Covid's latest trick. From the article:

"Transposable elements, or jumping genes, are now known to be responsible for many human diseases. Keeping them repressed by methylation, RNA binding, or the attentions of the innate immune system is a full-time jump for cells.

Last week, we reviewed the activation of one particular kind of transposable element, the Line-1 retrotransposons, in an ever-expanding host of neurodegenerative conditions. Retrotransposons derive from human endogenous retrovirus (HERVs) but typically have lost their signature long terminal repeat sequences at the beginning and ends of their genes.

On Tuesday, a real zinger was dropped onto the medRxiv preprint server that could potentially explain many of the commonly observed pathogenic features of SARS-CoV-2. The authors provide solid evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein activates the envelope (ENV) protein encoded by HERV-W in blood cells, which is in turn directly responsible for many pathological features of the disease."

While this is all analysis of preprint research, the evidence and implied results are very much in line with other long-term effects from Covid infection, especially neurocognitive symptoms, known to long haul Covid patients as "brain fog". Given that other research is showing long haul Covid cognitive symptoms are more accurately detected by the cognitive function test specifically used for HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND) compared to standard function tests, the implication of retroviral elements to the puzzle of PACS (Post-Acute Covid Symptoms, the official term now in use for long haul Covid) is disturbing.

The good news: only about 20-30% of people infected with Covid appear to be susceptible. This is, however, conspicuously in line with other data analysis showing that about 1 in 4 Covid victims has PACS / long haul symptoms after the acute infection stage...

Submission + - Computers uncover 100,000 new viruses in genetic data, clues to future outbreaks (science.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: It took just one virus to cripple the world’s economy and kill millions of people; yet virologists estimate that trillions of still-unknown viruses exist, many of which might be lethal or have the potential to spark the next pandemic. Now, they have a new—and very long—list of possible suspects to interrogate. By sifting through unprecedented amounts of existing genomic data, scientists have uncovered more than 100,000 novel viruses, including nine coronaviruses and more than 300 related to the hepatitis Delta virus, which can cause liver failure.

“It’s a foundational piece of work,” says J. Rodney Brister, a bioinformatician at the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s National Library of Medicine who was not involved in the new study. The work expands the number of known viruses that use RNA instead of DNA for their genes by an order of magnitude. It also “demonstrates our outrageous lack of knowledge about this group of organisms,” says disease ecologist Peter Daszak, president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research group in New York City that is raising money to launch a global survey of viruses. The work will also help launch so-called petabyte genomics—the analyses of previously unfathomable quantities of DNA and RNA data. (One petabyte is 1015 bytes.)

Submission + - Hacktivist Martin Gottesfeld in indefinite solitary, transferred to 2nd "CMU" (creators.com)

Submitted by Danngggg
Danngggg writes: Anonymous hacktivist Marty Gottesfeld was first covered by Slashdot in 2016, when he was rescued by at sea by a Disney cruise liner and then arrested by the FBI. He was initially prosecuted by Carmen Ortiz, the same U.S. attorney who dogged Aaron Swartz into suicide, after he defended sick teen Justina Pelletier from extreme abuse in the psych ward of Boston Children's hospital.

He's been practicing journalism from inside the Bureau of Prisons, most recently highlighting sexual abuse by Todd Royer, the unit manager for death row as well as for Marty's home for the last three years, the "Communications Management Unit" at FCI Terre Haute, in Terre Haute, IN. The CMU was created in 9/11 era to hold terrorists. They also appear to send political prisoners there.

In August prison officials told him that he was being recommended to "step down" out of the CMU. But this week he was transferred to the other CMU in Marion, IL. They are keeping him in indefinite solitary confinement without cause or explanation; Sunday marked the beginning of month 5. One of these two CMUs is likely where the U.S. will place Assange if extradited.

Submission + - Major legal changes needed for driverless car era (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Hope Thelps
Hope Thelps writes: The law commisions of England and Wales and of Scotland (statutory bodies which keep the laws in those countries under review) are recommending a shift in accident liability away from 'drivers' when autonomous cars become a reality.

Human drivers should not be legally accountable for road safety in the era of autonomous cars, a report says.

In these cars, the driver should be redefined as a "user-in-charge", with very different legal responsibilities, according to the law commissions for England and Wales, and Scotland.

If anything goes wrong, the company behind the driving system would be responsible, rather than the driver.

And a new regime should define whether a vehicle qualifies as self-driving.

In the inteim, carmakers must be extremely clear about the difference between self-drive and driver-assist features.

There should be no sliding scale of driverless capabilities — a car is either autonomous or not.

And if any sort of monitoring is required — in extreme weather conditions, for example — it should not be considered autonomous and current driving rules should apply.

Submission + - After Omicron, some scientists foresee 'a period of quiet' (science.org) 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Barely 2 months after it began, the Omicron wave is already ebbing in some countries. And although it has sickened huge numbers of people, caused massive disruption, and left many health care workers exhausted, it is also leaving something unusual in its wake: a sense of optimism about the pandemic’s trajectory. In countries where many people have been vaccinated or were infected, scientists say, the worst may finally be over.

“We anticipate that there will be a period of quiet before COVID-19 may come back towards the end of the year, but not necessarily the pandemic coming back,” Hans Kluge, director of the European Region of the World Health Organization (WHO), recently said in an interview. In the United Kingdom, where the Omicron wave crested early, many restrictions were scheduled to be dropped this week, including mandatory masks in public indoor spaces and COVID-19 vaccination passes.

The optimism is shared—although couched in caveats—even by some scientists and public health experts who have stressed the risks of the pandemic from the start and implored politicians to take stricter action. “We have reached a bit of a turning point,” says Devi Sridhar, a global health expert at the University of Edinburgh and an outspoken critic of the U.K. government’s past COVID-19 policies. Not only has the Omicron wave crested in several countries, but its toll has been smaller than feared. And the wave of infections has likely boosted immunity at the population level, which means future waves may wreak even less havoc.

Still, researchers urge caution. Omicron has shown that even a relatively mild wave can put a tremendous burden on health systems and societies as a whole, and it’s unclear how long Omicron immunity will last, how the virus will evolve from here on, and how often breakthrough infections will lead to long-term health problems. “I remain firmly in the camp of: We’ve made great progress but we still have a ways to go before this is truly over,” says Boghuma Titanji, a virologist at Emory University School of Medicine. Besides, “Wealthy countries moving on I fear will push the issues of access to vaccines and therapeutics access down the global priority list,” she says.

Comment Only truly secure way is an offline device (Score 1) 105

At this point, if one is paranoid about untrusted layers below the OS, it would be best to use something that isn't Intel/AMD or even any of the larger ARM family, with a simple dedicated, wired USB or even RS-232 interface (ideally an old VT220 terminal or something -- remember to shield properly against TEMPEST attacks).

A Raspberry Pi Pico has no Broadcom or other vendor subsidiary blobs in it, so one could run a bare-metal or simple RTOS that takes input, encrypts using modern strong standards, and spits out the ciphertext. Plaintext never leaves the secure keyboard micro channel.

Store the ciphertext as a file on a USB filesystem presented from the device like a USB key so you can plug it into your un-secure commodity PC afterwards to send.

Honestly it'd be easier just buy an old C64, Atari or Amiga and use that for any secure storage (with modern encryption for files). Keep an old USB floppy drive for interchange with modern systems.

Of course, if you feel you have to go even this far to secure your comms, you're probably under one or more of the Five Eyes, so you have bigger problems.

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