The prospect of using the popular genome-editing tool CRISPR to treat a host of diseases in people is moving closer to reality. From a report: Medical applications of CRISPR-Cas9 had a banner year in 2019. The first results trickled in from trials testing the tool in people, and more trials launched. In the coming years, researchers are looking ahead to more sophisticated applications of CRISPR genome editing that could lay the foundation for treating an array of diseases, from blood disorders to hereditary blindness. But although the results of clinical trials of CRISPR genome editing so far have been promising, researchers say that it is still too soon to know whether the technique will be safe or effective in the clinic. "There's been a lot of appropriate caution in applying this to treating people," says Edward Stadtmauer, an oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "But I think we're starting to see some of the results of that work."

It has only been seven years since researchers discovered that a molecular defence system called CRISPR-Cas9, which microbes use to fend off viruses and other invaders, could be harnessed to rewrite human genes. Since then gene-editing has attracted attention for its potential to modify embryos -- an application that is ethically and legally fraught if those embryos are destined to become human beings. But in parallel, scientists have been testing CRISPR's much less controversial ability to disable or correct problematic genes in other cells in order to treat a host of diseases.

Facebook won't use the phone numbers some users give it for two-factor authentication for its "people you may know" feature. From a report: The social network says the move is "part of a wide-ranging overhaul of its privacy practices." It previously used phone numbers to serve ads too but says it stopped doing that in June. Two-factor authentication is a great way to reduce the risk of accounts being compromised, so giving users reasons to avoid using it is vile, even by Facebook's admittedly low standards. When news broke last year that Facebook was misusing phone numbers in that way it was met with appropriate opprobrium from the media and privacy advocates.

In India, American companies dominate the internet. Facebook's WhatsApp is the most popular app on phones. Virtually every smartphone runs on Google's Android system. YouTube is the favorite video platform and Amazon is the No. 2 online retailer. For some Indian political leaders, it is as if their nation --which was ruled by Britain for a century until 1947 -- is being conquered by colonial powers all over again. And they are determined to stop it. From a report: "As a country, we have to all grow up and say that, you know, enough of this," Vinit Goenka, a railways official who works on technology policy for India's governing Bharatiya Janata Party, said at a conference last week. In recent months, regulators and ministers across India's government have declared their intention to impose tough new rules on the technology industry. Collectively, the regulations would end the free rein that American tech giants have long enjoyed in this country of 1.3 billion people, which is the world's fastest-growing market for new internet users. The proposals include European-style limits on what big internet companies can do with users' personal data, a requirement that tech firms store certain sensitive data about Indians only within the country, and restrictions on the ability of foreign-owned e-commerce companies to undercut local businesses on price. Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, commented on the story, saying, "India is currently the most important country in term of defining the future of Internet policy. It sits at the fulcrum between the United States and China. As it goes, so goes the world."

Chris Dixon, an American internet entrepreneur and investor in a range of tech and media companies including Kickstarter and Foursquare has written an essay on Medium highlighting some of the reasons why we should be excited about the future of technology. The reasons he has listed are as follows: 1. Self-Driving Cars: Self-driving cars exist today that are safer than human-driven cars in most driving conditions. Over the next 3-5 years they'll get even safer, and will begin to go mainstream.
2. Clean Energy: Attempts to fight climate change by reducing the demand for energy haven't worked. Fortunately, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs have been working hard on the supply side to make clean energy convenient and cost-effective.
3. Virtual and Augmented Reality: Computer processors only recently became fast enough to power comfortable and convincing virtual and augmented reality experiences. Companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are investing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, comfortable, and affordable.
4. Drones and Flying Cars: GPS started out as a military technology but is now used to hail taxis, get mapping directions, and hunt Pokemon. Likewise, drones started out as a military technology, but are increasingly being used for a wide range of consumer and commercial applications.
5. Artificial Intelligence: Artificial intelligence has made rapid advances in the last decade, due to new algorithms and massive increases in data collection and computing power.
6. Pocket Supercomputers for Everyone: By 2020, 80% of adults on earth will have an internet-connected smartphone. An iPhone 6 has about 2 billion transistors, roughly 625 times more transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium computer. Today's smartphones are what used to be considered supercomputers.
7. Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains: Protocols are the plumbing of the internet. Most of the protocols we use today were developed decades ago by academia and government. Since then, protocol development mostly stopped as energy shifted to developing proprietary systems like social networks and messaging apps. Cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies are changing this by providing a new business model for internet protocols. This year alone, hundreds of millions of dollars were raised for a broad range of innovative blockchain-based protocols.
8. High-Quality Online Education: While college tuition skyrockets, anyone with a smartphone can study almost any topic online, accessing educational content that is mostly free and increasingly high-quality.
9. Better Food through Science: Earth is running out of farmable land and fresh water. This is partly because our food production systems are incredibly inefficient. It takes an astounding 1799 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of beef. Fortunately, a variety of new technologies are being developed to improve our food system.
10. Computerized Medicine: Until recently, computers have only been at the periphery of medicine, used primarily for research and record keeping. Today, the combination of computer science and medicine is leading to a variety of breakthroughs.
11. A New Space Age: Since the beginning of the space age in the 1950s, the vast majority of space funding has come from governments. But that funding has been in decline: for example, NASA's budget dropped from about 4.5% of the federal budget in the 1960s to about 0.5% of the federal budget today.

An anonymous reader writes: One of the holy grails of cosmology is to measure, directly, exactly when the first stars and galaxies formed in our Universe. The Hubble Space Telescope has been pushing the distance record farther and farther back, with its measurements typically confirmed by ground-based, spectroscopic follow-ups. This time, however, the new record-holder was so distant that confirmation needed to be done from space: by Hubble itself. The result? A galaxy at a redshift of z=11.1, from when the Universe was just 400 million years old, or a mere 3% of its current age. This is a record that will likely stand until the James Webb Space Telescope launches, as it took a combination of incredible work and incredible luck to find a galaxy this far back with our current technology.

_Sharp'r_ writes In the first "empirical study of sexism in faculty hiring using actual faculty members", Cornell University researchers found that when using identical qualifications, but changing the sex of the applicant, "women candidates are favored 2 to 1 over men for tenure-track positions in the science, technology, engineering and math fields." An anonymous reader links to the study itself.

Orome1 writes "A file containing a million and one record sets containing Apple Unique Device Identifiers (UDIDs) and some other general information about the devices has been made available online by Anonymous hackers following an alleged breach of an FBI computer. 'During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java,' the hackers claim." Update: 09/04 13:44 GMT by T : A piece at SlashCloud points out that if the leak is genuine, this raises some sticky questions about privacy and security; in particular: "[H]ow did the agency obtain said information, and to what purpose? Why did all that personal data reside on the laptop of one special agent?"

Ant writes in with news that won't be welcomed by the incoming US administration as it tries to expand the availability of broadband Internet service. A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates, as noted by Ars Technica, that two-thirds of Americans without broadband don't want it. "...when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don't have broadband, availability isn't the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don't want it. The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value."

Smivs writes "The BBC are reporting that footage of one of the world's most strange and elusive mammals has been captured by scientists. Large, and with a long, thin snout, the Hispaniolan solenodon resembles an overgrown shrew. It can inject passing prey with a venom-loaded bite. Dr Sam Turvey, a ZSL (Zoological Society of London) researcher involved with the program, told BBC News: 'It is an amazing creature — it is one of the most evolutionary distinct mammals in the world.' Along with the other species of solenodon, which is found in Cuba (Solenodon cubanus), it is the only living mammal that can actually inject venom into their prey through specialized teeth. Little is known about the creature, which is found in the Caribbean, but it is under threat from deforestation, hunting and introduced species. Researchers say conservation efforts are now needed. The mammal was filmed in the summer of 2008 during a month-long expedition to the Dominican Republic — one of only two countries where this nocturnal, insect-eating animal (Solenodon paradoxus) can be found (the other is Haiti). The researchers from the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Ornithological Society of Hispaniola were able to take measurements and DNA from the creature before it was released."