dryriver shares a report from the BBC: 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.

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. Lead author Dr Rui Diogo, from the Howard University, 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." Dr Sergio Almecija, 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 visualize -- 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?"

An anonymous reader quotes a blog post by Curtis Poe , a freelance Perl/Agile/testing consultant and the author of the Wrox book Beginning Perl: By now, many of you have seen the Perl 6 Github issue "Perl" in the name "Perl 6" is confusing and irritating. The issue suggested renaming Perl 6. While some may think that the name of the issue is trolling, or offensive, the actual issue was created by Elizabeth (Liz) Mattijsen, one of the core Perl 6 developers, a long-time Perl 5 developer, and with her spouse, Wendy, has long been an enthusiastic support of Perl 5/6. There is no trolling here. There is a lot of deep thought, careful discussion, and a genuine desire to find a way to bypass some deeply divisive issues in the Perl community.

While the proposed name was "camelia", Damian Conway made a strong argument in favor of "raku" and it appears the community is leaning towards this name for various reasons... The far, far too terse backstory: the Perl 6 community seems to be split between those who view Perl 6 as a sister language to Perl 5 and those who view Perl 6 as a successor to Perl 5...

To say that this issue has been bitterly divisive would be an understatement.

Yubico is releasing the $70 YubiKey 5Ci, the first security key that can plug into your iPhone's Lightning port or a USB-C port, and it's compatible with popular password vaults LastPass and 1Password out of the box. The Verge reports: That means you may not have to remember your password for your bank ever again -- just plug the YubiKey into your iPhone, use it to log into the 1Password app, and get that bank password. At launch, it'll support these well-known password managers and single sign-on tools: 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, Idaptive, LastPass, and Okta. And when using the Brave browser for iOS, the YubiKey 5Ci can be used as an easier way to log into Twitter, GitHub, 1Password's web app, and a couple other services.

Notably, the 5Ci doesn't work with the newest iPad Pros at all, despite having a USB-C connector that fits. And you can't just plug the Lightning side of the 5Ci into an iPhone and expect it to work with any service that supports the FIDO authentication protocol -- our passwordless future isn't here just yet. Yubico tells The Verge that services have to individually add support for Lightning connector on the 5Ci into their apps.

Samsung has announced a new image sensor for phones that breaks records. Built-in partnership with Xiaomi, the new Samsung ISOCELL Bright HMX is the world's first mobile image sensor that goes beyond 100 million pixels. From a report: At 108MP, the new sensor allows for higher quality pictures in different light conditions. The resolution, which Samsung says is equivalent to DSLR cameras, allows for "extremely sharp photographs rich in detail," according to the firm. It's the first mobile image sensor to adopt a large lens size of 1/1.33-inch that allows the lens to absorb more light, leading to better quality pictures in low-light conditions. There's also an intelligent Tetracell technology that uses a pixel-merging method to "imitate" big-pixel sensors, allowing phones to produce brighter 27MP images. [...] The image sensor is built to tackle video recording as well, with Samsung claiming no losses in field-of-view when recording videos at resolutions up to 6K at 30fps.

An anonymous reader shares a post: Like many things that starts out as a mere annoyance, though eventually growing into somewhat of an affliction. One particularly dark and insidious thing has more than reared its ugly head in recent years, and now far more accurately described as an epidemic disease. I'm talking about the filth that is reCAPTCHA. Yes that seemingly harmless question of "Are you a human?" Truly I wish all this called for were sarcastic puns of 'The Matrix' variety but the matter is far more serious. Google describes reCAPTCHA as: "[reCAPTCHA] is a free security service that protects your websites from spam and abuse." However, this couldn't be further from the truth, as reCAPTCHA is actually something that causes abuse. In fact, I would go so far as to say that being subjected to constant reCAPTCHAs is actually an act of human torture and disregard for a person's human right of mental comfort. The author goes on to make several points.

"Lyft's Wednesday move to pull all its black and pink electric bikes from the East Bay, San Francisco and San Jose came after flammable battery packs or vandalism caused at least four bikes to catch fire," reports the Bay Area Newsgroup: San Jose city officials are encouraged by the fact no one was injured when a bike caught fire there on Tuesday, said Colin Heyne, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation... "They have no intention of re-introducing the bikes until they know what the problem is and have fixed it," Heyne said. "We'll work with them to get a full picture of what they are doing to investigate these batteries and what they will go through for safety testing before they relaunch the bikes...."

Representatives from Lyft reached out to the city on Wednesday after two fires were reported in San Francisco over the past week, he said, and told them it would deactivate the e-bikes until it could remove them from its fleet...

Lyft spokeswoman Julie Wood declined to answer questions about the incidents, other than to say no one was injured.... Wood on Thursday didn't respond to repeated questions from this news organization about whether there were any fires involving the e-bikes outside of San Francisco.
Lyft told the paper at least one of the fires was causd by vandalism (and not a malfunctioning battery) but acknowledged they weren't sure what caused the next two bike fires.

One frequent cycler wondered why Lyft didn't simply offer their customers regular (non-electric) bicycles? He told the newspaper that the disruption in service was frustrating -- though "I understand the safety concern and I don't want there to be a battery exploding between my legs when I'm riding the bike around."

The paper also notes reports that Lyft "pulled its black electric assist bikes in April after problems with the brakes caused some riders to careen over the handlebars."

The moon is getting smaller, which causes wrinkles in its surface and moonquakes, according to a new study sponsored by NASA. Time Magazine reports: As the moon's interior cools, it shrinks, which causes its hard surface to crack and form fault lines, according to research sponsored by NASA. The moon has gotten about 150 feet skinnier over the last few hundred million years. Astronauts have placed seismometers on the moon over a series of past missions. Scientists, who determined that the moonquakes are close enough to the fault lines to establish causality, published their analysis in a study in Nature Geoscience on Monday, according to NASA. The space agency has also recorded evidence of fault lines in a series of images. "Our analysis gives the first evidence that these faults are still active and likely producing moonquakes today as the Moon continues to gradually cool and shrink," said Thomas Watters, lead author of the study. Watters says that the quakes can register around a five on the Richter scale.

"Many are seduced by the idea that they can listen in silence," complains ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk.

"This doesn't seem to be true," he writes, describing a typical experience with some $279.95 Beats Studio3 wireless over-ear headphones: I could still hear so much of what was going on beyond the soccer match or movie upon which my headphones were supposed to be focused. This wasn't noise-canceling. It was noise-dulling... I did a little research. This noise-canceling thing is a splendid hype. The technology works best on quashing -- somewhat -- low-frequency sounds. The more high-pitched elements of life -- human speech, babies on planes, high-revving engines, the Darkness in concert -- get a little flattening at best, once you don your headphones. Door bells, a glass being dropped on the floor, a dog barking -- all these sounds were slightly dulled by my headphones, but still perfectly audible.

I'm not suggesting Beats is solely responsible for the promise of noise-canceling being overblown. I understand it's the same with all other headphones of the genre. It's like a self-driving car that actually needs you to check it's not about to kill you....

Yes, if I wear my Beats for a couple of hours and then take them off, I feel like I'm returning from some sort of purgatorial netherworld. But these things are supposed to cancel noise. You know, like you cancel a subscription or an air ticket. When I decide to cancel my flight from San Francisco to New York, I don't expect to still have to fly to Boise, Idaho.

Dropbox has quietly removed unlimited device linking for free accounts, meaning that unless you upgrade to one of its paid plans, which start at $8.25 per month, you will be restricted to three devices for a single account. From a report: The change was rolled out earlier this month, though it's worth noting that those who had linked more than three devices prior to March 2019 won't be directly affected. However, anyone who already exceeds the new limit will be impacted at some point, as they won't be able to add any more devices to their account in the future, and if they upgrade to a new phone, tablet, or computer, the three device limit will catch up with them.

Facebook, the world's largest social networking website, is down for many, users say. Third-party web monitoring tool DownDetector corroborates the claim, adding that more than 11,000 people have reported issues with accessing Facebook in the last 30 minutes or so.

Facebook's outage means social buttons and other Facebook functionalities that are embedded all over the web are also facing issue. Update: Instagram appears to be down, too, for some users.

Update 2: In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said, "We're aware that some people are currently having trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps. We're working to resolve the issue as soon as possible."

An anonymous reader shares a report: In an update to the chromium engine, which underpins Google's popular Chrome browser, the search giant has quietly updated the lists of default search engines it offers per market -- expanding the choice of search product users can pick from in markets around the world. Most notably it's expanded search engine lists to include pro-privacy rivals in more than 60 markets globally. The changes, which appear to have been pushed out with the Chromium 73 stable release yesterday, come at a time when Google is facing rising privacy and antitrust scrutiny and accusations of market distorting behavior at home and abroad.

"In Chicago, it used to be claimed that even death couldn't stop a person from voting," writes Slashdot reader lunchlady55. "But in the Deep South, there are new reports of discrepancies in voter turnout with the approval of new electronic voting systems." Ars Technica reports: [I]f any state is a poster child for terrible election practices, it is surely Georgia. Bold claims demand bold evidence, and unfortunately there's plenty; on Monday, McClatchy reported a string of irregularities from the state's primary election in May, including one precinct with a 243-percent turnout.

McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines. (In fact it was later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct.) Multiple sworn statements from voters describe how they turned up at their polling stations only to be turned away or directed to other precincts. Even more statements allege incorrect ballots, frozen voting machines, and other issues. "George is one of four states in the U.S. that continues to use voting machines with no ability to provide voters a paper record so that they can verify the machine counted their vote correctly," the report adds.

Early Wednesday morning, SpaceX founder Elon Musk posted a photo of the spacesuit that will be used by astronauts flying aboard the company's Dragon spacecraft, perhaps as early as next year. Ars Technica reports: In his Instagram post, Musk added that this suit was not a mock-up but rather a fully functional unit. "Already tested to double vacuum pressure," he wrote. "Was incredibly hard to balance aesthetics and function. Easy to do either separately." (Double vacuum pressure simply means the suit was probably inflated to twice the pressure of sea level and then put into a vacuum chamber.) Musk gave no other technical information about the suit. Most strikingly, it is white, in contrast to the very blue spacesuits unveiled by Boeing in January. These are not, strictly speaking, "space suits." Rather, they are more properly flight suits designed to be worn during the ride to space and again on the ride back down to Earth. They have a limited time in which they can operate in a full vacuum and are not intended for spacewalks.