180047718
submission
alternative_right writes:
The virus, known as beta-HPV, was thought in rare cases to contribute to skin cancer by worsening UV damage, but a recent study suggests it can actually hijack the body's cells to directly drive cancer growth.
A closer genetic analysis revealed something surprising: the beta-HPV had actually integrated itself into the DNA of the woman's tumor, where it was producing viral proteins that helped the cancer thrive.
Before now, beta-HPV had never been found to integrate into cellular DNA, let alone actively maintain a cancer.
180047262
submission
alternative_right writes:
In the decades after the war, joint U.S., Laotian and Vietnamese teams mounted several expeditions to search the peak, recovering several of the men lost that day. But the dense vegetation, remote environs and possibility of unexploded munitions at the site, not to mention the sheer size of the mountain, complicated the search for the remaining missing Airmen.
With the expertise of Russell Quick, a Ph.D. graduate in anthropology from UIC and member of the CRIM team, the researchers scanned the mountain with drones to make a digital 3D model of the site. They used a remote sensing technology called LiDAR, which maps the terrain using laser beams aimed at the ground and measuring their reflection back to the aircraft.
The program, trained on images of tropical forests, will ping when it detects an area that looks different from the rest.
"It will not give any alarms to rocks or trees or what you see in a tropical forest. But if you have a belt or something like that, it's an unusual object, and it'll create an alert," said Cetin.
The researchers homed in on several areas of interest and submitted their findings to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
180025718
submission
alternative_right writes:
Penchukov and the gangs he either led or was a part of stole tens of millions of pounds from them.
In the late 2000s, he and the infamous Jabber Zeus crew used revolutionary cyber-crime tech to steal directly from the bank accounts of small businesses, local authorities and even charities. Victims saw their savings wiped out and balance sheets upended. In the UK alone, there were more than 600 victims, who lost more than £4m ($5.2m) in just three months.
Between 2018 and 2022, Penchukov set his sights higher, joining the thriving ransomware ecosystem with gangs that targeted international corporations and even a hospital.
180017302
submission
alternative_right writes:
Instead, they propose that a new table is begun in the 358th month of the current table. With this approach, the table's predictions are only about 2 hours and 20 minutes early for both Sun and Moon alignment.
"This procedure would also entail that, occasionally, the first date in a successor table would be set at the 223rd month, about 10 hours and 10 min later relative to that alignment, to adjust for the gradually accumulating deviations of resettings at month 358," the authors write.
By comparing the table with our modern knowledge of eclipse cycles, they found that with this method, the Maya would have been able to accurately predict every solar eclipse observable in their territory between 350 and 1150 CE, since it corrects for the small errors that accumulate over time.
180008480
submission
alternative_right writes:
On a Sunday evening in June 1964, about 20 men gathered at a farm in Ohio for a Ku Klux Klan rally. The event featured a cross burning, some stray racist and antisemitic remarks, and a short, desultory speech by a TV repairman named Clarence Brandenburg. The meeting was so small and inconspicuous that no one aside from the participants would have noticed it if Brandenburg had not invited a local television station to document his publicity stunt. But thanks to footage shot by a cameraman at Cincinnati's NBC affiliate, the rally triggered a police investigation that resulted in criminal charges against Brandenburg.
Five years later, that case produced a Supreme Court ruling that still reverberates in debates about the limits of free speech. The Court's 1969 decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio established a new, stricter constitutional test for government restrictions on provocative rhetoric.
180008406
submission
alternative_right writes:
Ideologically motivated hacktivist groups increasingly carry out cyberattacks against public administrations in the EU, with the sector remaining a long-term target, says the latest (6 November) European Union Agency for Cyber Security (ENISA) report.
https://archive.ph/IN2KN
180001716
submission
alternative_right writes:
Years ago, we had a large and exciting group at Houston 2600: hobbyists of all sorts, each with their own interests and active projects or at least fascinations. Then COVID-19 hit and people stopped coming. Now, it seems the audience are staying home, and the only people sporadically showing up are interested in talking about the latest hacking tools to use for their future careers in computer security, or a group of wannabe hackers who seem to have no curiosity about anything other than money. Where are the hobbyists, and how do we get them to join us and share some excitement about technology? Or did Big Tech and social media finally manage to kill that?
179988052
submission
alternative_right writes:
Countries around the world have been discussing the need to rein in climate change for three decades, yet global greenhouse gas emissions—and global temperatures with them—keep rising.
When it seems like we're getting nowhere, it's useful to step back and examine the progress that has been made.
Let's take a look at the United States, historically the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter. Over those three decades, the U.S. population soared by 28% and the economy, as measured by gross domestic product adjusted for inflation, more than doubled.
179987612
submission
alternative_right writes:
The FBI is attempting to unmask the owner behind archive.today, a popular archiving site that is also regularly used to bypass paywalls on the internet and to avoid sending traffic to the original publishers of web content, according to a subpoena posted by the website. The FBI subpoena says it is part of a criminal investigation, though it does not provide any details about what alleged crime is being investigated. Archive.today is also popularly known by several of its mirrors, including archive.is and archive.ph.
179950446
submission
alternative_right writes:
Anthropic, a leading AI company, tells Axios that its most advanced systems are learning not just to reason like humans — but also to reflect on, and express, how they actually think.
They're starting to be introspective, like humans, Anthropic researcher Jack Lindsey, who studies models' "brains," tells us.
Why it matters: These introspective capabilities could make the models safer — or, possibly, just better at pretending to be safe.
179944446
submission
alternative_right writes:
Duane Roberts — the billionaire businessman credited with inventing the frozen burrito — has died [at the age of 88].
After serving honorably in the U.S. military, he went on to revolutionize the food industry with the frozen burrito in 1956.
Beyond business, Duane was a proud philanthropist and developer ... best known for restoring the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in Riverside, California. His generosity also extended to animal welfare, education, veterans, and the arts.
179929510
submission
alternative_right writes:
Horror films work on the same principles: We experience fear within a safe environment, whether seated on the sofa in our living room or in a plush cinema seat.
The horror genre is more than mere entertainment, however. US movie director Wes Craven (1939-2015) regarded horror films as a "boot camp for the psyche," a sort of psychological training.
"In real life, human beings are packaged in the flimsiest of packages, threatened by real and sometimes horrifying dangers, events like [school shootings]. But the narrative form puts these fears into a manageable series of events. It gives us a way of thinking rationally about our fears," he once said.
179928986
submission
alternative_right writes:
The return to analog hobbies and spaces is about more than nostalgia for pre-internet times, researchers say.
A home where "technology is always in the background, working and listening, feels anxiety-producing" instead of restorative, architect Yan M. Wang tells Axios.
Rising costs for smart devices, new advances rendering old systems obsolete and tech troubleshooting can also cause homeowners headaches.
179921984
submission
alternative_right writes:
We have run dozens of direct detection experiments around the globe hunting for WIMPS—dark matter particles in this particular mass range. And they're not all the same kind of experiments. There are also the scintillators, which use a giant vat of liquefied noble gas, like several tons of xenon. They wait for a dark matter particle to strike the xenon and cause it to scintillate, which is a fancy science word for "sparkle." We see the sparkle; we detect dark matter.
WIMPs aren't alone. They're just one example of a broader class of dark matter candidates, with delightful names like Q-balls, WIMPzillas, and sterile neutrinos. We've tuned our different experiments to capture different mass ranges or interaction strengths to cover as much of that wide dark matter spectrum as possible. We've even tried to manufacture various kinds of dark matter in our particle collider experiments.
And we've found nothing.
179918040
submission
alternative_right writes:
Today's cutting-edge theory—quantum gravity—suggests that even space and time aren't fundamental. They emerge from something deeper: pure information.
This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm—a mathematical foundation more real than the physical universe we experience. It's from this realm that space and time themselves emerge.
"The fundamental laws of physics cannot be contained within space and time, because they generate them. It has long been hoped, however, that a truly fundamental theory of everything could eventually describe all physical phenomena through computations grounded in these laws. Yet we have demonstrated that this is not possible. A complete and consistent description of reality requires something deeper—a form of understanding known as non-algorithmic understanding."
