117113382
submission
dryriver writes:
A study in the British Medical Journal ( https://www.bmj.com/content/36... ) that looked at 24 of the 100s of Medical apps available on Google Play found that 79% pass all sorts of user info — including sensitive medical info like what your reported symptoms are and what medications you are taking in some cases — on to 3rd and 4th parties. A German-made and apparently very popular medical app named Ada was found to share user data with trackers like Facebook, Adjust and Amplitude for example ( article in German: https://www.heise.de/ct/artike... ). The New York Times also warned recently about apps that want to retrieve/store your medical records ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0... ). From the conclusion of the study: 19/24 (79%) of sampled apps shared user data. 55 unique entities, owned by 46 parent companies, received or processed app user data, including developers and parent companies (first parties) and service providers (third parties). 18 (33%) provided infrastructure related services such as cloud services. 37 (67%) provided services related to the collection and analysis of user data, including analytics or advertising, suggesting heightened privacy risks. Network analysis revealed that first and third parties received a median of 3 (interquartile range 1-6, range 1-24) unique transmissions of user data. Third parties advertised the ability to share user data with 216 “fourth parties”; within this network (n=237), entities had access to a median of 3 (interquartile range 1-11, range 1-140) unique transmissions of user data. Several companies occupied central positions within the network with the ability to aggregate and re-identify user data.
117052832
submission
dryriver writes:
Picture this: You want to buy 3 small items from some online retailer totalling about 50 bucks. A programming book, a USB thumbdrive and an HDMI cable. But you don't want to give this online retailer your full name, credit card number, email address, home postal address, phone number or other data for this insignificant little 50 Dollar online transaction, nor do you want to bother with "registering an account" at the online retailer's webpage with password hassles and such. You want to buy quickly and anonymously, just like you can from a bricks and mortar shop with cash. You now instruct your bank — or another online shopping intermediary you DO trust with your data — to pay for those 3 items, receive them, and send them on to your home address. The online retailer gets 50 bucks as usual, but does NOT get identifying private data about you. You just shopped online, without having to bend over and ID yourself in X different ways to some online retailer, and your private info didn't go into yet another who-knows-where forever-database that may some day be hacked or compromised. Why is this simple, simple service not really a thing in the real world? Why can you walk into a bricks and mortar shop in most countries, pick out some products, pay in cash and walk out, and when you want to buy the exact same (non-dangerous) items online, you have to tell some profit-oriented retailer all sorts of stuff about yourself? Why is real world store shopping pretty much anonymous — as it has been for centuries — and online shopping almost like being ID'd before boarding a flight at an airport?
117050450
submission
dryriver writes:
CNN reports: The British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has said it will vote later Friday on whether the procedure popularly known as the Brazilian butt lift is safe enough to be performed in the UK. An expert panel will assess the latest evidence and decide whether to uphold previous guidance it issued in 2018, which strongly warned surgeons against performing the surgery because of its high fatality rate. If the guidance is upheld it will essentially ban the procedure in the UK, though surgeons could in theory choose to ignore the recommendation.
Concern about the procedure, which has been rising in popularity over the past five years, follows a number of cases of serious illness and death. Two Britons are known to have died following the surgery, and it is feared that globally the number of fatalities could be in the hundreds, BAAPS president and plastic surgeon Paul Harris told CNN.
The surgery, which can cost in excess of £6,000 (around $7,400) in Britain, involves taking fat from another part of the patient's body and injecting it into the buttocks, to increase their size and roundness. But there is a risk of injecting the fat into large veins, after which it can travel to the heart or brain, causing a "fat embolism" and illness or death, according to the plastic surgeons' body.
According to an anonymous 2017 survey of 692 surgeons worldwide, 32 respondents reported fatalities and 103 cited non-fatal cases of fat embolism.
116928346
submission
dryriver writes:
In the 2000s and early 2010s, there was incredibly amounts of content producers screaming "Media piracy in developing countries is killing our business" at the top of their lungs. All sorts of evil, nasty, bad people in the developing world were buying pirated CDs, DVDs, MP3s, PC games, Software, academic textbooks and other stuff, rather than the legit items. When people pointed out "Uh, aren't you pricing your products waaaay too high for the developing world? People there are not as rich as Americans, Germans, Scandinavians or Japanese people you know?", the content producers just screamed "Piracy is illegal! Piracy is illegal!" and kept their prices skyhigh. This 440 page study published back in 2011 ( http://piracy.americanassembly... ), which went completely ignored by the entire content industry, pinpointed the problem perfectly: Market Failure caused by Dollar prices set far too high for people in countries like Brazil, Chile, Vietnam, Russia, the Phillippines and other countries to possibly afford. The consumer demand was there. People very much wanted to buy the legit item. The producers — mostly large Western corporations at that time — overpriced by incredible amounts for reasons probably only they understand. This forced low-income people in the developing world to either consume nothing at all made in the West, and become cut off from the Western "Media Bubble" in a rapidly globalizing world, or to turn to local substitute suppliers — content pirates — who provided the exact same digital product at prices that were actually within reach of the average consumer in these countries. The industry willfully ignored what every 1st year Economics student knows — if you set your product prices at a level nobody can afford, market failure will occur even when there is high demand, and consumers will go in search of legal or illegal substitutes for what they cannot buy from you.
116899240
submission
dryriver writes:
A number of high-profile people have sounded shrill alarms over Artificial Intelligence potentially being a threat to humanity in the past. Chief among them was Mr. Tesla himself, Elon Musk. The Question: Do elite businessmen like Musk genuinely fear a SkyNet style violent takeover of humanity by killer robots, or are they, in actuality, concerned that AI may attack their currently very profitable business models by empowering smaller competitors? A few years from now, A.I. and ML algorithms fed with enough training material may be able to do everything from designing haute couture and expensive designer furniture, to doing the interior/exterior design of a 100K car, to generating the code that makes an AAA Playstation or XBox game tick. In other words, what takes serious time, financial investment and manpower today, and is only really affordable to elite companies that have Millions today may be done be just as well or better by AI or ML algorithms 5 to 10 years from now. Is this what Musk and other CEOs are afraid of? Not A.I. that goes genocidal and takes over the world with killer robots, but rather far more benign A.I. that pulls the Dollar rug out from under their profitable Mega businesses by empowering much smaller businesses to compete with the big boys for the first time?
116852486
submission
dryriver writes:
The BBC reports: In an interview with BBC News, Microsoft's chief executive Satya Nadella has said that despite national security concerns, backing out of China would “hurt more” than it solved.
“A lot of AI research happens in the open, and the world benefits from knowledge being open,” he said.
"That to me is been what's been true since the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. Therefore, I think, for us to say that we will put barriers on it may in fact hurt more than improve the situation everywhere.”
Microsoft’s first office in China was opened by founder and then-chief executive Bill Gates in 1992. Its main location in Beijing now employs more than 200 scientists and involves over 300 visiting scholars and students. It is currently recruiting for, among other roles, researchers in machine learning.
In April, it was reported by the Financial Times that Microsoft researchers were collaborating with teams at China’s National University of Defence Technology, working on artificial intelligence projects that some outside observers warned could be used for oppressive means.
Speaking to the newspaper, Republican Senator Ted Cruz said: “American companies need to understand that doing business in China carries significant and deepening risk.”
He added: "In addition to being targeted by the Chinese Communist party for espionage, American companies are increasingly at risk of boosting the Chinese Communist party’s human rights atrocities."
116562948
submission
dryriver writes:
Euronews reports: Picture this: A hundred million years ago, an advanced civilization detects strange signatures of life on a blue-green planet not so far away from their home in the Milky Way. They try sending signals, but whatever's marching around on that unknown world isn't responding. So, the curious galactic explorers try something different. They send a robotic probe to a small, quiet space rock orbiting near the life-rich planet, just to keep an eye on things.
To be clear, even SETI researchers who like the idea of checking out Earth's co-orbitals acknowledge that it's a long shot. "How likely is it that alien probe would be on one of these co-orbitals, obviously extremely unlikely," said Paul Davies, a physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University who was not involved in Benford's new paper on the idea, published Sept. 20 in The Astronomical Journal. "But if it costs very little to go take a look, why not? Even if we don't find E.T., we might find something of interest."
Probes on co-orbitals would be a prime example. Little is known about co-orbitals themselves, Benford said. The first was discovered in 1997, and most of the 15 or so other known co-orbitals near Earth were found after 2010. They hover around Earth in weird configurations, some of which look like horseshoes or tadpoles, as they make their journeys around the sun. The closest, known as "Earth's Closest Companion," is about 38 times as far away from Earth as the moon, and appears to be locked in a stable configuration with Earth that will last centuries, according to NASA. If co-orbitals stick by Earth for long periods, Benford said, they'd be a perfect spot for alien surveillance devices.
If a story like this played out at any moment in Earth's 4.5 billion-year history, it just might have left an archaeological record. At least, that's the hope behind a new proposal to check Earth's so-called co-orbitals for signs of advanced alien technology.
Co-orbitals are space objects that orbit the sun at about the same distance that Earth does. "They're basically going around the sun at the same rate the Earth is, and they're very nearby," said James Benford, a physicist and independent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) researcher who dreamed up the idea that aliens might have bugged Earth via these co-orbitals while he was at a conference in Houston last year. If he's right, the co-orbitals could be a way to detect alien activity that occurred before humans even evolved, much less turned their attention toward the stars.
116561950
submission
dryriver writes:
Euronews reports: Iraq’s government shut off internet access, imposed curfews and deployed elite forces to secure key facilities on Wednesday amid widespread protests aimed at toppling the country’s regime. Five people were killed and more than 200 were wounded in the largest display of public anger against Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi's year-old government. Domestic instability could prove to be the final nail in the coffin of Abdul Mahdi's fragile coalition government, sworn in last year as a compromise between rival factions after an inconclusive election. Counter-terrorism troops were deployed to Baghdad airport where its men fired live ammunition and tear gas at protesters, preventing them from storming the facility. They were also deployed in the southern city of Nassiriya after police "lost control" when gunfights broke out between protesters and security forces, police sources said. Curfews were later imposed in Nassiriya and two other southern cities, Amara and Hilla, the police sources told Reuters, as protests that began on Tuesday over unemployment, corruption and poor public services escalated. Demands on Wednesday included the "fall of the regime" and government and political party buildings set ablaze in two other southern provinces.
116550088
submission
dryriver writes:
An account called "ThisIsWoke" has been posting meme-like posts, videos and slogans on its accounts on Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/this... ) and Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/thisi... ) using a great big "WOKE" logo. Middle East Eye has discovered that this account is actually part of a UK Home Office Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism counterterrorism programme: A Facebook page and Instagram feed with the name This Is Woke describes itself as the work of a “media/news company” that is engaging “in critical discussions around Muslim identity, tradition and reform”. In fact, it was created by a media company on behalf of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) at the UK Home Office. The OSCT is refusing to disclose information about the network, however, and will not explain the reason it was created, claiming that to do so would “prejudice the national security of the UK”. This Is Woke draws upon the popular expression “stay woke”, a call — originally African-American — to remain aware of social and racial justice issues.
Launched earlier this year, the network features videos with titles such as "A trillion ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica" and "Millions of pangolins are hunted each year". Alongside them are other videos with titles such as "It’s time to hold extremism to account for terrorism, not Islam". This video went viral, being viewed 1.7 million times. It also features videos of short panel discussions, with four young people sitting on a sofa debating subjects such as "Will we all become vegan?" and "Are dating apps the way forward?", interspersed among these are videos with titles such as "What does wearing a hijab mean to you?"
One discussion video on the This Is Woke Facebook page is entitled "What is fake news?" The four young participants offer contributions such as "online, we can never know who the source is" and "we have to train ourselves against what’s going on out there". They are then filmed on the street, conducting vox pops among members of the public and asking them: "How do you know the news you hear is real?" The content of the This Is Woke Instagram feed includes quotations from Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and one from Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Islamic caliph — “sometimes the people with the worst past, create the best future”. There are also photographs of smiling women in hijabs.
The content of the Facebook page and Instagram feed was created for the OSCT by a London-based communications company, Breakthrough Media, several people with knowledge of the project have confirmed.
When Middle East Eye asked the Home Office for information about the project, under the terms of the UK’s Freedom of Information Act, the OSCT confirmed that it held such material but refused to disclose any, citing the section of the act that concerns national security.
While acknowledging that there was a public interest in transparency surrounding such projects, the OSCT said that national security concerns were “of overriding importance”.
Disclosure of information about This Is Woke “would open up detailed information about organisations and individuals who are engaged in the delivery of, and who are supporting activities to prevent terrorism”, the OSCT said.
116503716
submission
dryriver writes:
CNN reports: Singapore's sweeping anti-fake news law, which critics warn could be used to suppress free speech in the already tightly controlled Asian city state, came into force Wednesday. Under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill, it is now illegal to spread "false statements of fact" under circumstances in which that information is deemed "prejudicial" to Singapore's security, public safety, "public tranquility," or to the "friendly relations of Singapore with other countries," among numerous other topics. Government ministers can decide whether to order something deemed fake news to be taken down, or for a correction to be put up alongside it. They can also order technology companies such as Facebook and Google — both of which opposed the bill during its fast-tracked process through parliament — to block accounts or sites spreading false information. The act also provides for prosecutions of individuals, who can face fines of up to 50,000 SGD (over $36,000), and, or, up to five years in prison. If the alleged falsehood is posted using "an inauthentic online account or controlled by a bot," the total potential fine rises to 100,000 SGD (around $73,000), and, or, up to 10 years in prison. Companies found guilty of spreading "fake news" can face fines of up to 1 million SGD (around $735,000).
116466888
submission
dryriver writes:
Middle East Eye reportys: The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, Middle East Eye has established. Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company's UK office six years ago, has for several years also served with the 77th Brigade, a unit formed in 2015 in order to develop “non-lethal” ways of waging war. The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as “information warfare”. Carter says the 77th Brigade is giving the British military “the capability to compete in the war of narratives at the tactical level”; to shape perceptions of conflict. Some soldiers who have served with the unit say they have been engaged in operations intended to change the behaviour of target audiences. What exactly MacMillan is doing with the unit is difficult to determine, however: he has declined to answer any questions about his role, as has Twitter and the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD). Twitter would say only that “we actively encourage all our employees to pursue external interests”, while the MoD said that the 77th Brigade had no relationship with Twitter, other than using it for communication.
116462090
submission
dryriver writes:
Babies in the womb have extra lizard-like muscles in their hands that most will lose before they are born, medical scans reveal. They are probably one of the oldest, albeit fleeting, remnants of evolution seen in humans yet, biologists say, in the journal Development. They date them as 250 million years old — a relic from when reptiles transitioned to mammals. It is unclear why the human body makes and then deletes them before birth. The biologists say the developmental step may be what makes thumbs dextrous. Thumbs, unlike other digits, retain an extra muscle. — - — - — - — Dr Sergio Almécija, an anthropologist who studies ape and human evolution, at the American Museum of Natural History, said the findings provided a deeper appreciation of human development but raised many questions.
"The novelty of this study is that it allows us to visualise — with precision — when exactly during our development some structures appear and/or disappear," he said. "The important question for me now is, 'What else are we missing? What will we find when all the human body is inspected at this detail during its development?" 'What is causing certain structure to disappear and then to appear again? We can now see how it happens but what about the why?" The biologists are planning more work looking at other parts of the human body in detail. They have already studied the feet and know extra muscles develop and disappear there too while babies grow in the womb. Monkeys and apes still have these muscles and use them to climb and manipulate objects with their feet.
Dr Diogo said: "Some of the things we are losing, it's not that we are getting better humans and more progress. No. We are really losing things that will make super-humans. "Super-humans would be keeping those muscles because you would be able to move all your digits, including your feet, as thumbs. "We lost them because we do not need them."
116359956
submission
dryriver writes:
CNN reports: Sports brand Asics has issued an apology after "objectionable content" played on the screens above its store in Auckland, New Zealand. Pornographic videos were shown on promotional screens for hours outside an Asics store in Auckland, New Zealand on Sunday morning, the New Zealand Herald reported. The Japanese sportswear brand apologized Sunday, saying the material had been played above its central Auckland store due to a hack. "This morning an unknown person gained access to the screens above our Central Auckland store and some objectionable content was displayed on the screens," said the statement published on Asics New Zealand's Facebook page. Security officer Dwayne Hinagano told the New Zealand Herald that an explicit sex video played for hours and was seen by startled passers-by. "The video ran for a long time, maybe two hours from 8am until the shop staff arrived at about 10am. Some people were shocked, but others just stopped and watched," Hinagano told the news outlet, which also cited witnesses who said the video had been running since 1 a.m.
116296992
submission
dryriver writes:
CNN reports: In its effort to bring the Libra cryptocurrency to life, perhaps the biggest hurdle for Facebook is a lack of trust and opposition from regulators around the world, who are concerned about Libra's potential implications for privacy and financial stability and Facebook's role in managing it. Facebook's (FB) answer to those criticisms is the Libra Association, a group the company says is an independent, Switzerland-based organization that will govern the digital currency. The organization is a coalition of companies and nonprofits and is designed as a sort of buffer between Facebook and the project it developed. Facebook says it will ensure neither it nor any other company has an outsized influence over the new currency. The group has 28 "founding member" organizations but plans to grow to 100. But many of those founding members have close personal, professional and financial ties to Facebook and one another, calling Facebook's characterization of the Association into question. Those links reach the group's top leadership. Experts say the connections raise questions about Facebook's ongoing influence over the project and whose values will be applied to Libra. "When the white paper said Facebook will be just one of 100 members, you can see with your own eyes that's not quite true," said Katharina Pistor, a professor at Columbia Law School and an expert on corporate governance and finance. — Many experts and lawmakers believe Facebook's billions of users will make Libra the most widely used cryptocurrency and could make it big enough to rival government-backed currencies like the dollar, potentially threatening the stability of traditional financial systems. The Libra Association would be responsible for overseeing that currency: ensuring it retains value, determining how to work with regulators and how users' privacy will be protected. That's why regulators are particularly worried about Facebook wielding significant influence over the Libra Association. Some don't trust the social media company to steward such an ambitious project because of its history of privacy violations and having its platform co-opted by foreign trolls most notoriously aiming to interfere in US elections. Many US lawmakers repeated such concerns at two hearings on the project before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees in July. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg "and his executives have proven over and over that they don't understand governing or accountability," said Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio, during one of the July hearings. The fight over Libra comes as Facebook and other big tech companies are also facing bipartisan probes over antitrust concerns.
116295174
submission
dryriver writes:
BitChute ( https://www.bitchute.com/ ) is a video hosting website like YouTube, except that it states its mission as being "anti-censorship" and is Peer-To-Peer, WebTorrent based. From Wikipedia: "It is based on the peer-to-peer WebTorrent system, a JavaScript torrenting program that can run in a web browser. Users who watch a video also seed it. BitChute does not rely on advertising, and users can send payments to video creators directly. In November 2018 BitChute was banned from PayPal." So it seems that you don't need huge datacenters to build something like Youtube — Bitchute effectively relies on its users to act as a distributed P2P datacenter. Is this the future of internet video? Will more and more people flock to P2P video hosting sites as/when more mainstream services like Youtube fall prey to various forms of censorship?
